(Brill S Studies in Intellectual History 155) Wyger Velema - Republicans - Essays On Eighteenth-Century Dutch Political Thought-BRILL (2007) PDF
(Brill S Studies in Intellectual History 155) Wyger Velema - Republicans - Essays On Eighteenth-Century Dutch Political Thought-BRILL (2007) PDF
Brill’s Studies in
Intellectual History
General Editor
A.J. Vanderjagt, University of Groningen
Editorial Board
C.S. Celenza, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore
M. Colish, Oberlin College
J.I. Israel, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
J.D. North, University of Groningen
W. Otten, Utrecht University
VOLUME 155
Republicans
Essays on Eighteenth-Century
Dutch Political Thought
By
Wyger R.E. Velema
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2007
Cover illustration: Holland, seated between Aristocracy and Democracy, holds Monarchy and
Tyranny in chains. From Gregorio Leti, Kort Begrip der Helden-Deugden (The Hague, 1700).
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Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The essays brought together in this book have been written in the
course of almost two decades of research on the history of eighteenth-
century Dutch political thought. Some are published here more or
less as they were originally conceived, some have been substantially
rewritten for this volume, and some have been translated into English
for the first time. In what follows, I have listed all previous publications
I have used in writing the chapters of this book:
Chapter One: “‘De Eerste Republiek van Europa’. Iets over de
politieke identiteit van de Zeven Verenigde Provinciën in de achttiende
eeuw”. Documentatieblad van de Werkgroep Achttiende Eeuw, 24 (1992) 29–44;
“Wijnand W. Mijnhardt on the Historiography of Republicanism: A
Reply”. De Achttiende Eeuw. Documentatieblad Werkgroep Achttiende Eeuw, 38
(2005) 193–202.
Chapter Two: “‘That a Republic is Better than a Monarchy’: Anti-
monarchism in Early Modern Dutch Political Thought” in: Martin
van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner, ed. Republicanism. A Shared European
Heritage. 2 vols. Cambridge, 2002.
Chapter Three: “God, de deugd en de oude constitutie. Politieke
talen in de eerste helft van de achttiende eeuw”. Bijdragen en Mededelingen
betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 102 (1987) 476–497.
Chapter Four: “Beschaafde republikeinen. Burgers in de achttiende
eeuw” in: Remieg Aerts and Henk te Velde, ed. De stijl van de burger.
Over Nederlandse burgerlijke cultuur vanaf de middeleeuwen. Kampen, 1998;
“Ancient and Modern Virtue Compared: De Beaufort and Van Effen
on Republican Citizenship”. Eighteenth-Century Studies, 30 (1997) 437–443.
Chapter Five: “Republican Readings of Montesquieu. The Spirit of the
Laws in the Dutch Republic”. History of Political Thought, XVIII (1997)
43–63.
Chapter Six: “Revolutie, contrarevolutie en het stadhouderschap,
1780–1795”. Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 102 (1989) 517–533.
Chapter Seven: “From the Rule of Law to Popular Sovereignty: The
Concept of Liberty in the Dutch Republic, 1780–1787”. Zeitschrift für
Historische Forschung. Vierteljahresschrift zur Erforschung des Spätmittelalters und
xii acknowledgements
1. A Republican Identity
one essential political conviction: they agreed that the republican form
of government was the only one appropriate for the Seven United
Provinces. The same had been true for their political predecessors,
the Staatsgezinden and Orangists, whose incessant political quarrels had
produced thousands of publications since the second half of the seven-
teenth century. Indeed, the attempt to define the essential characteris-
tics of a free republic was probably the only common feature of all the
various political languages spoken by the Dutch during the eighteenth
century. Regardless of all their differences, the notion of being “free-
born republicans” bound the eighteenth-century Dutch together and
constituted a large part of their sense of identity.4 In this book, the many
different eighteenth-century interpretations of what it meant to be a
freeborn republican will occupy a central place. To keep things in a
proper perspective, however, this introductory chapter starts with a look
at the republican identity the Dutch all shared. The nature of this iden-
tity may be clarified by a discussion of the way in which the eighteenth-
century Dutch compared their political life with that of other European
countries. It may, however, also be approached through the commen-
taries of contemporary foreign observers on the salient characteristics
of the Dutch Republic and its inhabitants.
Although they often made an exception for England, a country
where “the republic hides under the form of the monarchy”, the eigh-
teenth-century Dutch generally regarded the monarchies surrounding
them with deep distrust.5 Whereas the first generations of Dutch repub-
licans had—for obvious reasons—regarded Spain the best illustration
of the sad fate of liberty under a single-headed government, in the
course of the seventeenth century the Dutch gradually came to focus
more and more on the threat to liberty posed by absolutist France.6
Since the days of Louis XIV at the latest, the French monarchy was
viewed as the perfect embodiment of all the evils of monarchical rule
and the very opposite of everything republicanism stood for. Already
in the early 1660s the brothers De la Court had depicted France as a
state utterly lacking in liberty, ruled by a corrupt and ever expanding
Van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt and Meijer Drees, Andere landen,
andere mensen.
introduction: “the first republic of europe” 3
court, and in which it was the fate of the inhabitants “to be skinned
by Courtiers and Soldiers”.7 Louis XIV’s subsequent aggressive for-
eign policies and religious intolerance certainly did nothing to improve
this estimate.8 During the first half of the eighteenth century, the clas-
sical republican theorist Lieven de Beaufort took France as his prime
example whenever he discussed the oppression and aggression charac-
teristic of the modern absolute monarchy.9 The same era also added a
new element of criticism to its discussions of the perils of French abso-
lutism. Deeply worried by the rapid rise of French politesse as a cultural
ideal in Europe, Dutch Spectatorial writers from the 1730s did their
utmost to present it as the ideological outgrowth of absolutist monarchy
and entirely unsuitable for free republicans. What the Dutch Repub-
lic needed, they argued, was not the imitation of fashionable French
courtly politesse, but a return to the true and sober republican politeness
of the seventeenth-century golden age.10 This combined political and
cultural detestation of France survived relatively unchanged until the
very end of the French ancien régime in 1789. It was only then that politi-
cal developments in France became an inspiring example to the Dutch
revolutionaries who were attempting to transform their old republic.11
Until that time, however, even the Patriots who, for reasons of inter-
national politics, were forced to seek its support against their Orangist
opponents viewed the French monarchy with undiminished suspicion.
Indeed, it was a Patriot historian who perhaps best summed up the
negative view the Dutch still had of France in the 1780s.
In the sixth and final volume of his voluminous Inquiry into the Causes
of the Rise, Decline and Regeneration of the Most Important Ancient and Modern
Peoples, published in 1784, Cornelis Zillesen found it hard to deny
that the French had some reason to boast of their achievements in
recent times. Yet as so many Dutch commentators had done before
him, he immediately added that the final judgment about this country
and its politics could only be negative. The French political system,
Zillesen believed, was a perfect illustration of Montesquieu’s theory
that monarchies entirely revolved around the principle of honor. French
social and political life resembled a steep pyramid, with the king at the
very top and substantial barriers and gradations between the various
groups constituting society. Not only did this result in an undesirable
and exaggerated respect for social superiors, but also in an unequal
system of justice, since “nobility, rank, birth, or favor” determined the
outcome of everything. French manners were admittedly polite, but also
appallingly insincere and entirely dominated by external and superficial
appearances. This perverse code of conduct had gradually spread from
the absolutist court to even the most humble peasant abode. Without
doubt, most French problems were ultimately caused by the presence
of this court. The French had been taught to regard their king as the
sole bearer of political power and as the living image of God on earth.
They were not allowed to think for themselves, to openly express their
wishes or to practice the religion of their preference. As a result
true love of country, flowing from the freedom of thought and from
respect for a form of government, laws and customs ultimately based
on the will of the people, is unknown to them.
history of his own country, Cornelis Zillesen discussed the rise, flour-
ishing and decline of the classical states at length; Johan Meerman was
the author of a comparison between the Seven United Provinces and
the Achaean Confederacy; and as late as 1792 Elie Luzac attempted to
demonstrate the dangers of radically changing a well-established gov-
ernment through the use of mainly classical examples.17 Classical antiq-
uity, in short, was omnipresent.
But what exactly did it mean to the eighteenth-century Dutch? In its
ambivalence, their attitude to the ancient republics in some ways may
be said to resemble the thought of that great contemporary theorist,
Montesquieu. Like him, many Dutchmen felt admiration for the repub-
lican political virtue on which they thought the most famous and suc-
cessful ancient republics had been built. Also like Montesquieu, how-
ever, a considerable number of Dutchmen doubted the viability of clas-
sical republican ideals in the modern European world and distanced
themselves from them.18 Both these views were a constant presence in
eighteenth-century Dutch political thought and existed in a mutual ten-
sion. Thus, as a number of chapters in this book will demonstrate, there
was a clear strand of classical republicanism in Dutch political thought,
running from Rabod Scheels through Lieven de Beaufort to the Patriot
reformers and the Batavian revolutionaries of the end of the eighteenth-
century. Yet at the same time there were those, from the brothers De
la Court in the late seventeenth century, via the Spectatorial writers
of the first half of the eighteenth century, to political theorists such as
Dirk Hoola van Nooten and Elie Luzac at the end of the Dutch ancien
régime, who for various reasons seriously doubted the wisdom of vener-
ating the republics of classical antiquity. Indeed, as was the case with
Montesquieu, these contradictory attitudes frequently coexisted in the
political thought of one and the same person.
It is therefore quite difficult to determine exactly how important
the example of the classical republics still was to eighteenth-century
Dutch republicans. In the end, however, it seems most of them real-
ized that, fascinating as the classical world remained, the differences
with the modern world were too substantial to be overlooked. Perhaps
the greatest of these, many thought, was the absence of a highly devel-
17 [De Beaufort] Verhandeling van de Vryheit in den Burgerstaat; Zillesen, Onderzoek der
Oorzaaken, I, 112–276; Meerman, Discours qui a remporté le prix; [Luzac] Lettres sur les
Dangers.
18 The Dutch reception of Montesquieu is discussed in Chapter Five.
introduction: “the first republic of europe” 7
tioned the Swiss republic in one breath with the United Provinces as
a “république éternel” in the Esprit de Lois.27 There could also be lit-
tle doubt that the Swiss form of government, with its strong admixture
of direct democracy, offered ample opportunities for republican citizen
participation. Yet even this variety of republicanism could not entirely
count on the approval of the Dutch. Whereas they thought the Italian
city republics to be overly aristocratic, they judged the Swiss form of
government to be too democratic. Many eighteenth-century Dutchmen
were perfectly willing to acknowledge that this in itself was a noble form
of political organization. The problem simply was that it was unsuitable
as a source of inspiration and imitation for the Dutch Republic, given
the size of its population, its international position, and the nature of
its economic life. The conservative theorist Johan Meerman, who had
previously compared the confederative structures of the Swiss and the
Dutch republics, thus formulated the difference:
That in the Democratic Cantons of Switzerland, where there are neither
international relations of any significance, nor complicated domestic
arrangements, and where the happy inhabitants do not live in Cities,
but devote themselves to agriculture around their scattered villages or
take their cattle out to graze on the juicy slopes of the Alps: that there
the entire body of the Nation assembles once a year to perform the
simplest acts of sovereignty, and for the rest of the time leaves the daily
administration of affairs in the hands of elected Officials, will not strike
anybody as strange, just as it is far from strange that small Republics,
consisting of little more than a single city, are governed in this way.
But that any State of importance in Europe, that this Commonwealth
is suited for such a form of government is simply unthinkable.28
The question that must now be asked is whether or not foreign observ-
ers shared the strong views the Dutch held about the unique nature of
their republic.
Republic see Haley, The British and the Dutch, 107–124; Van Strien, British Travellers in
Holland; Van Strien, Touring the Low Countries.
12 chapter one
33
Swart, The Miracle of the Dutch Republic.
34
For recent general interpretations of Dutch seventeenth-century history see Scha-
ma, The Embarrasment of Riches; Israel, The Dutch Republic, 231–957; Frijhoff and Spies,
1650. Bevochten eendracht; Prak, Gouden Eeuw; Van Deursen, De last van veel geluk. A most
valuable comparative perspective is offered in Davids and Lucassen, A Miracle Mirrored.
35 Frijhoff and Spies, 1650. Bevochten eendracht, 130.
introduction: “the first republic of europe” 13
36 Israel, The Dutch Republic, 957–1130; De Vries, De economische achteruitgang der Repu-
bliek; De Vries and Van der Woude, Nederland 1500–1815; Carter, Neutrality or Commitment;
Van Nimwegen, De Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden als grote mogendheid; Venturi, Utopia
and Reform.
37 The literature on early modern travel and travel writing is, of course, immense. I
have found the following works to be particularly helpful: M˛aczak, Travel in Early Modern
Europe; Wuthenow, Die erfahrene Welt; Bausinger, Beyrer, and Korff, Reisekultur; Elsner and
Rubiés, Voyages & Visions; Hulme and Youngs, The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing;
Bödeker, “Reisebeschreibungen”.
38 A wonderful account of this milieu is provided by Goldgar, Impolite Learning. On
Leti see Morpurgo, “Leti en Nederland”; Horodisch, “Gregorio Leti: seine Neubewer-
tung”; Barcia, Un politico dell’età barocca; Israel, “Gregorio Leti (1631–1701)”.
14 chapter one
convinced that the Dutch Republic had the best republican govern-
ment ever devised:
We may truthfully say that never has there been a Republic in the entire
world with a better form of government than Holland, or one better
suited to satisfy everybody and to ignite the love of Country in every
single inhabitant … The richest and most powerful people are satisfied
because all matters go through their hands and are administrated by
them in turns: the common people are satisfied because their Magistrates
are mild and humble and because they themselves may hope one day to
become part of the Government: since there is no law denying anybody
access to political office.44
With such a form of government in place, the rest of the Dutch miracle
was easily explained. Living in ideal political circumstances, the Dutch
had all the incentive they needed to ceaselessly devote themselves to
the common good. One of the best ways to do so, Leti suggested,
was to engage in commerce, since commerce was “the soul of the
Republic” and rich citizens were “the treasure-chest of Free Countries”.45
This salutary accumulation of commercial riches, which simultaneously
benefited the individual citizen and the common good, was in turn
furthered by a mild and reasonable system of justice, a large measure
of religious toleration, and a willingness to keep admitting new citizens
to the country. For Leti, it is clear, the modern commercial republic of
the Seven United Provinces had for the first time in history succeeded
in truly realizing the highest ideals of classical republicanism. Indeed,
there was no better example on the face of the earth of the truth of
Cicero’s famous dictum: Communis utilitatis derelictio contra naturam est.46
Eighty years after this ecstatic praise for the republican blessings of
the United Provinces, Carlo Antonio Pilati di Tassulo published the
two volumes of his Lettres sur la Hollande. Born in Northern Italy in
1733, Pilati became one of the leading Italian thinkers of the Enlight-
enment. During the late 1760s and the early 1770s, he acquired Euro-
pean fame with the bold proposals for the reform of Italy he formu-
lated in his Di una riforma d’Italia.47 Pilati was an eminent legal scholar
and a tireless advocate of legal reform, a productive author of legal and
44 Ibidem, 158.
45 Ibidem, I, 341; II, 66.
46 Ibidem, II, 576.
47 The work is discussed in Carpanetto and Ricuperati, Italy in the Age of Reason, 277–
283.
16 chapter one
48 On Pilati’s life and work see Rigatti, Un illuminista trentino del secolo XVIII ; Venturi,
The End of the Old Regime in Europe, II, 535–554; Ferrari and Romagnani, Carlantonio Pilati.
49 Quoted in Venturi, The End of the Old Regime in Europe, II, 536.
50 [Pilati] Lettres sur la Hollande, I, 1.
51 Ibidem, 5, 129, 220.
52 Ibidem, 248.
53 Ibidem, 52.
introduction: “the first republic of europe” 17
lande et les Hollandais; Van Strien-Chardonneau, “Le Voyage en Hollande”; Van Strien, De
ontdekking van de Nederlanden.
61 On Voltaire and the Republic see Van der Sterre, Voltaire en de Republiek; on
one of their many cafés, he observed, you would find them freely
discussing matters of religion and politics. And why not? They had no
persecution to fear.
The clergy has no tribunals on which the life and fortune of laymen
depend. And the Magistrates, at least as long as the most extreme license
is avoided, regard the liberty of expression as an honorable sign of their
own moderation & moreover laugh about matters that elsewhere would
enrage the Government.67
Liberty pervaded every aspect of Dutch life. The love of liberty was evi-
dent in the freedom of conscience and the general religious toleration
practiced by the Dutch, but also in the mutual respect between differ-
ent groups in society.68 Thus the Dutch nobility took care not to offend
average citizens with superfluous ostentation, while these citizens in
turn showed great respect for their own domestic servants.69 The love of
liberty even affected the education of children, who were never beaten
because this was considered “too shameful for freeborn citizens”.70
Indeed, it determined Dutch national character, which was serious, fru-
gal, honest, sincere, and “more civil than polite, more humane than
gracious”.71 To La Barre, one might say, the free republican society of
the Dutch represented the triumph of genuine humanity over empty
politesse.
Some thirty-five years after La Barre published his book, Denis Di-
derot visited the Dutch Republic—and, of course, Saint Petersburg—
on the only trip he ever took outside France. His Voyage en Hollande,
not published until 1819, amply demonstrated the resurgence of repub-
lican sentiment in France during the second half of the eighteenth
century.72 Although substantial parts of it were copied from previous
French descriptions of the Dutch Republic, Diderot added a strong
element of uncompromising republicanism to these older texts.73 To
Diderot the commercial Dutch Republic, a state whose goal it was “to
Bataves, 97.
22 chapter one
Holland und der Holländer and Chales de Beaulieu, Deutsche Reisende in den Niederlanden.
introduction: “the first republic of europe” 23
3. Preliminary Remarks
Both in their own eyes and in the eyes of foreign observers, the eigh-
teenth-century Dutch were first and foremost free republicans. Recent
attempts to marginalize this all-important political dimension of eigh-
teenth-century Dutch public discourse and national identity have there-
fore remained less than convincing.103 Yet while it is relatively easy to
establish that the eighteenth-century Dutch prided themselves on being
republicans, it is much more difficult to define what exactly they meant
when they used that term. Indeed, as will become clear in the course
of this book, it is impossible to reduce the many varieties of eighteenth-
century Dutch republicanism to one single definition. This observa-
tion, of course, equally applies to eighteenth-century republicanism in
general. After a lifetime of reflection on the topic, John Adams in
1807 famously concluded that republicanism was the most “unintel-
ligible word in the English language”.104 A few years earlier, percep-
tive observers of the Dutch political scene had already complained
that republicanism lent itself to an infinity of interpretations, since it
consisted of little more than general principles “that are expressed
in abstract words, with very broad and undetermined meanings”.105
Although both these comments were written at a time when the con-
cept of republicanism was undergoing perhaps the most fundamental
changes in its entire history, the sense of bewilderment they expressed
is still with us today.106
Over the past decades, intensive scholarly debate about the nature
and meaning of early modern republicanism has failed to lead to even
a beginning of consensus. There is virtually no aspect of early mod-
see e.g. Wood, Creation of the American Republic; Ball and Pocock, Conceptual Change and the
Constitution; Ball, Transforming Political Discourse, 47–79; Fontana, The invention of the modern
republic.
introduction: “the first republic of europe” 25
107 The literature on early modern republicanism is by now immense. Among the
essential works are Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment; Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and His-
tory; Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought; Skinner, Liberty before Liberal-
ism; Skinner, Visions of Politics. Volume II. Renaissance Virtues; Wood, Creation of the American
Republic; Venturi, Utopia and Reform; Koenigsberger, Republiken und Republikanismus; Gam-
boni and Germann, Zeichen der Freiheit; Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern; Wootton,
Republicanism, Liberty, and Commercial Society; Fontana, The invention of the modern republic;
Van Gelderen and Skinner, Republicanism. A Shared European Heritage; Scott, Commonwealth
Principles; Monnier, Républicanisme, Patriotisme et Révolution française.
108 That this situation is now rapidly changing may be seen in, for instance, Skinner
110 E.H. Kossmann, “Dutch Republicanism” in: Kossmann, Politieke Theorie en Geschie-
denis.
111 Venturi, Utopia and Reform, 70.
introduction: “the first republic of europe” 27
1 Herbert H. Rowen, “The Dutch Republic and the Idea of Freedom” in: Wootton,
Thirdly and finally, the study of the history of early modern Dutch
political thought has, until quite recently, been hampered by the fact
that those scholars who did study it were obsessed with the need to
identify a particularly and exclusively Dutch form of political discourse.
This was the dominant perspective both in Kossmann’s classic 1960
monograph—the first, it should be mentioned in passing—on the polit-
ical thought of the Dutch seventeenth century and in the Dutch debate
following the publication of J.G.A. Pocock’s Machiavellian Moment in
1975.3 Kossmann’s conclusion in the exchange last mentioned that there
was no “Dutch paradigm” in early modern political thought may very
well be true, but the question it answers does not seem to be particu-
larly fruitful or enlightening, for there were very few if any early mod-
ern European nations with totally original and entirely exclusive tra-
ditions of political thought or language.4 The dominant early modern
political languages were, to a large extent, international. The interest-
ing question, therefore, is how and why they were applied, rejected,
adapted or extended in various national and international contexts and
under different circumstances. Fortunately, such an approach is now at
last slowly gaining ground in the study of Dutch political thought, the
pioneering effort in this respect being E.O.G. Haitsma Mulier’s 1980
monograph The Myth of Venice and Dutch Republican Thought in the Seven-
teenth Century.
The above general observations on the study of early modern Dutch
republicanism all strongly apply to the subject of the present chapter,
the anti-monarchical element in early modern Dutch political thought.
First of all, this evidently crucial aspect of Dutch republicanism has
so far not been subjected to systematic study. Secondly, it is eminently
suited to dispel the myth that the Dutch were disinclined to give polit-
ical matters much thought. There can be no doubt that the anti-
monarchical literature in the Dutch Republic, ranging from popular
and cheap pamphlets to learned treatises, was enormously rich, both
in quantity and in quality. It would, of course, only have been sur-
prising had this not been the case in a country that originated in a
revolt against a monarch and prided itself on its republican liberty ever
of Political Thought”.
4 E.H. Kossmann, “Dutch Republicanism” in: Kossmann, Politieke Theorie en Geschie-
denis.
anti-monarchism in early modern dutch political thought 33
since.5 Thirdly and finally, even the most superficial perusal of Dutch
anti-monarchical writings immediately makes it clear that Dutch the-
orists did not operate in national isolation. Just as they liberally used
French Huguenot theories of resistance during the sixteenth-century
struggle with Philip II, they borrowed from Machiavellian republican-
ism, Cartesian psychology, and Hobbesian philosophy in the course
of the seventeenth century.6 In the eighteenth century in turn they
adapted Addison and Steele’s spectatorial politeness, utilized Mon-
tesquieu’s new typology of the forms of government, and absorbed
Paine’s anti-monarchism.7 To look for a purely Dutch and entirely orig-
inal form of anti-monarchism would, it is clear, be both useless and
nonsensical.
The interesting question to be asked, then, is not whether Dutch
anti-monarchical theorists did or did not use predominantly non-Dutch
authors as their sources of inspiration, but how they adapted the var-
ious available international political languages to their own needs and
circumstances. Here it needs to be pointed out with some emphasis that
the circumstances the early modern Dutch found themselves in were
rather exceptional.8 In an age that saw the growth of various forms of
territorially extended and more or less centralized monarchy, the Dutch
inhabited a small, decentralized, commercial republic. The first func-
tion of their reflections upon the monarchical form of government was
therefore to increase their understanding of the organization of their
own state by comparing it to the political life of the countries surround-
ing the Dutch Republic. Had this been all, Dutch anti-monarchism
might never have become as intense as it did. What provided the stimu-
lus for the most principled and fervent rejections of monarchy from the
mid seventeenth century on, however, was not international compari-
son, but the role of anti-monarchism in domestic political dispute.
The state that had emerged from the Dutch Revolt was a repub-
lic in which the assemblies of the States, variously composed in each
5 Early modern Dutch concepts of liberty are discussed in Haitsma Mulier and
Velema, Vrijheid.
6 Van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt; Kossmann, Politieke theorie in
Leeb, Ideological Origins of the Batavian Revolution and Klein, Patriots Republikanisme.
8 All previous general histories of the Dutch Republic, both in English and in
Dutch, have now been superseded by Jonathan Israel’s magisterial The Dutch Republic.
Illuminating reflections on the history of the Dutch Republic in comparative perspec-
tive are offered in Davids and Lucassen, A Miracle Mirrored.
34 chapter two
9
Rowen, The Princes of Orange, ix.
10 Mörke, ‘Stadtholder’ or ‘Staetholder’?, passim.
11 Ibidem, 77–112.
12 On Orangist political thought during the First Stadholderless Era see Van de
14 The Dutch Drawn to Life (London, 1664) 39, cited in Rowen, John de Witt, 381.
15 Indispensable to the study of the political thought of this period is Van de
Klashorst, Blom and Haitsma Mulier, Bibliography of Dutch Seventeenth-Century Political
Thought. General discussions of the debate over the Stadholderate in the First Stadhold-
erless Era include Geyl, “Het stadhouderschap in de partijliteratuur” and G.O. van de
Klashorst, “De ‘ware vrijheid’, 1650–1672” in: Haitsma Mulier and Velema, Vrijheid.
16 [De Witt] Deductie, ofte declaratie van de Staten van Hollandt ende West-Vrieslandt. Parts
of the Deduction have been translated into English in Rowen, The Low Countries in Early
Modern Times, 192–200. Rowen discusses the Deduction and De Witt’s republicanism in
John de Witt, 380–400.
36 chapter two
Nederland, 36–49; Haitsma Mulier, The Myth of Venice, 120–169; Blom, Morality and Causal-
ity in Politics, 157–182. See also the essays brought together in Blom and Wildenberg,
Pieter de la Court in zijn tijd.
19 I have used the 1662 third edition of the Consideratien van Staat, Ofte Polityke Weeg-
dam in 1649.20 For De la Court, man was a vulnerable, needy, and weak
creature, dominated by strong passions and powerful natural drives,
among which self-love and the desire to further his own interests—
defined as the limitless accumulation of property, honor, and power
regardless of the cost to others—were the most important ones. These
passions could and should be bridled and tamed by various means,
the development of reason and virtue through education being among
them. Yet in the end—flesh and blood being stronger than mind and
reason—it was unrealistic to expect even the most civilized and rea-
sonable person entirely to rise above his selfish passions unless he was
literally forced to do so.
It is necessity, and the fear of harm, which bridle man much more than
reason and virtue, for reason and virtue can do no more than to give
advice, whereas necessity forces. It breaks, as the saying goes, both laws
and iron.21
Departing from this rather bleak view of human nature and behavior,
De la Court immediately moved on to its implications for political life.
In the state of nature, he explained with several references to Thomas
Hobbes, man lived in a perpetual state of war and in constant fear
of all his fellow human beings. Given the fact that this was the most
dreadful situation imaginable, a perfect hell on earth to which even the
worst of all governments was to be preferred, everybody was desirous
to leave it.22 The way to do so was “to make a peace with several people
and a treaty not to damage each other, but to help each other against
the violence of all others”.23 For the treaty to succeed, it was essential
that it would stipulate who was to be given the power to maintain it.
This could be one person (monarchy), a small assembly (aristocracy), or
everybody (popular government or democracy), as long as this highest
sovereign power was not divided. For to establish a divided sovereignty,
De la Court maintained with great emphasis, was to choose a straight
road back to the disastrous state of nature.24
From De la Court’s brief treatment of the nature of man and the
origins of political society two core elements of his political thought
emerged with great clarity. On the basis of his bleak view of man, he
25 Ibidem, 34.
26 Ibidem, 36–39.
anti-monarchism in early modern dutch political thought 39
27 Ibidem, 35.
28 Ibidem, 175–229.
29 That monarchism indeed had “extraordinary tough roots” is rightly emphasized
in contemporary English political discourse. Cf. Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism, 89–93
and the literature mentioned there.
40 chapter two
keep the child stupid and ignorant. The courtiers helped the prince in
this design to gain his favor, but also to later have the advantage of a
weak ruler they could dominate. Young princes were therefore brought
up with useless entertainments. The only thing they learned was to
follow their lowest lusts, whereas their reason remained underdevel-
oped. Small wonder that, when they eventually came to the throne,
they already were “more evil than other people”.34
Once on the throne, most princes simply wanted to continue fol-
lowing their basest passions. In order to be able to do so they needed
unlimited wealth and therefore sucked the country dry.35 It was also
essential that no threat to their position should be allowed to develop:
provincial governors were distrusted and frequently replaced, big and
populous cities were kept in check with castles and armies. Yet the
prince himself was only to a very limited extent directly involved in
this ruthless exploitation of his subjects. Since he rather followed his
lusts than engaged in the hard task of governing, he gladly left most
decisions to his courtiers.36 Monarchies, it was clear to De la Court,
were never administered by virtuous counselors, magistrates, and pub-
lic servants, but invariably by the “vicious courtiers” who were in the
direct environment of the prince and who constantly had his ear. Since
these courtiers could only ingratiate themselves with the prince by con-
stant flattery and by following him in the relentless pursuit of base plea-
sures, none of them escaped moral corruption. This is why, De la Court
remarked, a monarchical court is justly described as “a great whore” or
“an immense brothel”.37 Indeed, untruthfulness was the very essence
of court life. To illustrate his point, De la Court told one of his many
fables. A Frenchman and a Dutchman visit the Kingdom of the Apes.
During the first two days of their visit they are lavishly entertained.
On the third day they are brought before the king and asked what they
think of his magnificent government. The Frenchman replies with great
eloquence that he has never seen such beauty and style and is promptly
offered a position on the king’s secret council. The blunt Dutchman,
however, remarks
34 [De la Court] Consideratien van Staat, Ofte Polityke Weeg-schaal, 56–69; [De la Court]
that he has seen nothing that even remotely resembles good government,
but only luxury, gluttony, excessive drinking, fornication, hunting, danc-
ing, and gaming; which confirms the saying: an ape is an ape, even if it
wears golden clothing.
were deliberately kept weak and defenseless. They were neither allowed
to put up fortifications of their own nor to train their citizens in the use
of arms. Having thus been made entirely powerless, the subjects were,
in the third place, subjected to ever increasing taxes, to the point where
nobody in the end had anything left. Indeed, in a monarchy anyone
who showed any sign of wealth, wisdom, learning or moral courage was
feared by the court and consequently in danger of losing his life. Under
a successful monarchy, therefore, these things rapidly disappeared.42 To
increase their power over their subjects, finally, monarchs frequently
engaged in offensive wars. For apart from giving them the opportunity
to add to their own riches, such wars allowed them to raise taxes
to levels previously unheard of and to use the army against the last
remains of urban power and independence.43
Having outlined the main characteristics of monarchical rule, De
la Court was left with three important questions. Why was it, in the
first place, that, given the unmitigated dreadfulness and barbarism of
monarchical government, it almost invariably received higher praise
than republican government? The answer was simple. In republics,
where there was a greater freedom of speech, everyone wanted to
rule and the sitting government was therefore constantly criticized. In
monarchies, on the other hand, the only voices to be heard were those
of paid court flatterers and—much the same thing—royal historiogra-
phers.44 The second question was somewhat more complicated. Why
was it, De la Court asked, that the monarchies of the countries sur-
rounding the Dutch Republic were less harsh than his own general
typology of monarchical rule would lead one to expect? The answer
was historical. That monarchical rule in Western Europe was relatively
mild, that the subjects of these kingdoms still possessed some riches,
commerce, learning, and virtue, was solely due to the fact that these
hereditary and centralized monarchies were relatively recent creations,
erected on the remnants of republican forms of government which they
had so far not been able to eradicate completely. But that, De la Court
warned, was only a matter of time.45
The third, final and most burning question, of course, was: what
did this analysis of monarchical government tell the inhabitants of the
42 Ibidem, 134–137.
43 Ibidem, 138–142.
44 [De la Court] Politike Discoursen, Book V, 108–110.
45 [De la Court] Consideratien van Staat, Ofte Polityke Weeg-schaal, 168–170, 230–257.
anti-monarchism in early modern dutch political thought 43
Anglo-Dutch Moment; Rowen, The Princes of Orange, 131–148; Hoak and Feingold, The World
of William and Mary; Troost, Stadhouder-koning Willem III.
44 chapter two
52 Blok, Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Volk, III, 390–391; Geyl, Geschiedenis van de
Nederlandsche Stam, II, 315; De Jongste, “Een bewind op zijn smalst”, 49.
53 For a fuller and more general treatment of De Beaufort’s political thought see
Chapter Three.
54 This may help explain why he singled out the equally classically oriented Rabod
Herman Scheels, author of Libertas Publica (1666), as his only worthy predecessor in the
Dutch Republic: [De Beaufort] Verhandeling van de Vryheit in den Burgerstaat, 3. On Scheels
see Kossmann, Politieke theorie in het zeventiende-eeuwse Nederland, 32–34.
55 This opposition has recently been identified as the core of early modern “neo-
the Sovereignty of the State consists of the body of the People, and that
the Citizenry has no reason to complain that it is being excluded from
the Government or that its voice is not heard in affairs of State.58
The survival of this precious Dutch republican liberty, De Beaufort
insisted, entirely depended on the willingness of both citizens and re-
gents to completely devote themselves to the common good. His con-
ception of virtue, in other words, was classically republican in a way De
la Court’s had not been.59
De Beaufort was quite explicit about the fact that the political virtue
he deemed necessary for the attainment and survival of republican
liberty was a demanding and difficult ideal. Indeed, he was convinced
that most peoples and many individuals were altogether unfit for it. A
truly free republic had to be inhabited by citizens and regents whose
elevated mind would allow them to disregard material gain and direct
self-interest, whose reason would enable them to discern the value
of liberty, and whose virtue would always make them act “for the
good of the Fatherland and the welfare of the people”.60 Although
De Beaufort’s Treatise at times reads like an instruction manual for
the proper behavior of regents, its central message was certainly not
directed at regents only. On the contrary. All members of a republican
political community, both regents and citizens, had to display political
virtue. More importantly, in good Aristotelian or classical republican
fashion De Beaufort emphasized the constant reversal of roles between
regents and citizens, the alternation of ruling and being ruled. In order
for such a system to work the maintenance of a high degree of what
he called “civic equality” (“burgerlyke evengelykheid”) was an absolute
necessity.61
The decline of republican liberty, De Beaufort was convinced, invari-
ably commenced with the joint disappearance of civic equality and
political virtue. Following classical authors, he identified ambition and
luxury as the two main causes of this process. Ambition, the burning
desire to elevate oneself in the political world, he observed,
58 Ibidem, 129–130.
59 Despite a quarter century of discussion, criticism and revisionism, the most con-
vincing and powerful account of early modern classical republicanism remains Pocock,
The Machiavellian Moment.
60 [De Beaufort] Verhandeling van de Vryheit in den Burgerstaat, 207–210.
61 Ibidem, 200, 338–339, 348–349.
anti-monarchism in early modern dutch political thought 47
ruins equality, tramples the Laws, raises people above their Fellow Citi-
zens, above the Laws, and above the Fatherland, from which arise enor-
mous irregularities, strife, discord and in the end public violence and the
rape and loss of liberty.62
Almost equally harmful was luxury. It made people proud and haughty
and therefore unwilling to live in a world of civic equality. At the same
time it replaced virtue with a voluptuous cowardice and thus paved the
way for the introduction of political slavery.63
The worst form of political slavery, the very opposite of republican
liberty, was absolute monarchy. Contrary to De la Court, De Beaufort
distinguished between various types of monarchy, absolute and limited
monarchy being the most important ones. It was to absolute monar-
chy that he devoted most of his attention, on the one hand because he
thought that this was the form to which most monarchies in the end
tended, on the other hand because it had become such a powerful phe-
nomenon in recent European history. Indeed, he was convinced that
“the love of liberty that has always been so characteristic of the peo-
ples of Europe has become so weak that it has almost disappeared”.64
To counter this trend, it was of the utmost importance to demonstrate
that, whatever paid royal propagandists might endlessly repeat, abso-
lute monarchy was the worst possible form of government.65 It was,
briefly put, contrary to the natural state of man, to reason, to the goal
of good government, and to sound politics.
In the state of nature, De Beaufort remarked—appealing to Roman
law—all men were equal and equally free. Now this obviously changed
with the transition to civil society, yet even there it remained true that
slavery, the total subjection to the will of another person, was incom-
patible with human nature and the rights of man. Absolute monar-
chy, the form of government which in effect reduced men to slaves,
could therefore only be founded on violence and was illegitimate. It
was also plainly contrary to reason and to the goal of good govern-
ment. That goal, the age-old salus populi suprema lex, was incompatible
with all power being vested in the unlimited will of one person. Here
66 Ibidem, 79–80.
67 Ibidem, 96–103.
68 Ibidem, 103–115.
anti-monarchism in early modern dutch political thought 49
71 [Van der Capellen] Aan het Volk van Nederland, 60–88. The quotations are on 60
and 69.
72 Grondwettige Herstelling, van Nederlands Staatswezen, I, 330–331.
73 De Post van den Neder-Rhyn, III, nr. 141, 1250.
74 Brief over de waere Oorzaek van ’s Lands Ongeval, 58.
75 [Van der Capellen] Aan het Volk van Nederland, passim; Grondwettige Herstelling, van
Nederlands Staatswezen, I, 330–331; [De Wakker van Zon] De Adel, 100, 123.
76 De Post van den Neder-Rhyn, III, nr. 141, 1248.
77 Ibidem, 1250.
78 Grondwettige Herstelling, van Nederlands Staatswezen, I, 147–148.
anti-monarchism in early modern dutch political thought 51
EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY
POLITICAL LANGUAGES
Council of State. Two other matters caused an even greater stir. First
of all, there was the highly complicated issue—which came to a head
in 1732—of whether or not William was entitled to the marquisate of
Veere and Flushing. Secondly, there was William’s controversial and
politically sensitive marriage to George II’s daughter Anna in 1734.1
All these practical political issues were treated at considerable length
in the polemic here under discussion. In the end, however, the dispute
did not primarily revolve around practical politics, but around differ-
ent conceptualizations of the political world. Contemporaries and later
eighteenth-century generations were fully aware of the importance of
this debate, yet it has not received full or adequate treatment in mod-
ern historiography.
Both this modern neglect and the few things that have been said
about this polemic in later historiography throw a revealing light on the
way the political thought of the first half of the eighteenth-century has
hitherto been approached by historians. It is, first of all, not unusual to
find moral condemnation of an author whose personal behavior seems
to be in conflict with the message of his writings substituted for a sus-
tained analysis of his thought. Lieven the Beaufort, who participated
in ruling practices we would nowadays not hesitate to describe as oli-
garchic, has been a frequent victim of such overly simplistic moralism.2
Pieter Geyl blamed him for “shameless hypocrisy” and more recently
the Treatise on Liberty in Civil Society has, on the same grounds, been called
“less than edifying”.3 If dismissing an author’s work were this easy, the
canon of Western political thought would be very short indeed.
More serious and therefore more important is the tendency in re-
cent, often prosopographically inspired research dealing with the “high
politics” of this period simply to deny the relevance of political dis-
course. Thus the author of a study about the elite of Gouda during the
eighteenth century announces that he has paid no attention to the ideo-
logical and religious views of the group he has studied. He continues by
confidently asserting that the study of such views is irrelevant when it
comes to answering the question as to how the elite succeeded in main-
1 Geyl, Willem IV en Engeland tot 1748, 1–71; Schutte, “Willem IV en Willem V”,
smalst”, 49.
early eighteenth-century political languages 55
taining its position.4 It is, in other words, presupposed here that the
political and religious discourse of the elite played no significant role
in its capacity to maintain its hegemony. In the light of our increased
sensitivity to linguistic forms of dominance, such a presupposition not
only seems highly implausible, but also an unnecessary impoverishment
of our view of the past.5
The few historians who have shown a serious interest in the political
thought of the first half of the eighteenth century, have unfortunately
also failed to do justice to the richness of its content. They have tended
to underestimate the depth of the ideological disputes during the period
and moreover frequently and anachronistically dismissed them as futile
or unrealistic. Thus C.R. Emery, the author of the only full length study
of the political thought of these decades, characterized the debate of
the late 1730s as follows: “The similarities between De Beaufort and
Burmania are far greater than the points of difference—a fact which
lends an air of abstraction and irrelevance to the whole dispute”.6 No
doubt the participants in this intense and prolonged polemic would
have shown great surprise upon hearing that their intellectual exertions
were futile and superfluous.
Perhaps the prevailing malaise in the study of Dutch early eigh-
teenth-century political thought is best remedied by attempting a new
beginning. Instead of hastily indulging in moral condemnation, in apri-
oristic dismissal or in retrospective judgments of irrelevance, histori-
ans might more profitably start with a systematic analysis of the polit-
ical discourse of the period. It is through such intensive study of the
contemporary political vocabulary that our understanding of this era,
which certainly was not the cultural desert it is often held to be, may
gain in depth and exactitude. The aim of the present chapter is to
contribute to such a renewed study of early eighteenth-century politi-
cal discourse by demonstrating that the late 1730s witnessed an exciting
political debate, in which differences of a fundamental nature emerged
between republicans and Orangists.
2. Classical Republicanism
Smugness and complacency are the terms one most frequently encoun-
ters in discussions of Lieven Ferdinand de Beaufort’s Treatise on Liberty in
Civil Society.7 A careful study of this extraordinary text, however, imme-
diately reveals that such qualifications are entirely inappropriate. It is,
in fact, a sustained meditation on the internal and external fragility
of republican liberty. Surveying the recent course of European history,
De Beaufort found very little cause for optimism. Whereas formerly
monarchies used to be tempered by the law and the presence of repre-
sentative assemblies, they were now, at the beginning of the eighteenth
century, almost invariably of the absolutist variety. This development,
De Beaufort claimed, had fundamentally changed the nature of Euro-
pean politics and society. The behavior of these new absolutist rulers
was characterized by an unquenchable thirst for glory, by unmitigated
aggressiveness and by total untrustworthiness. To fund their enormous
standing armies and to keep up their luxurious courts, modern kings
had raised taxes to such an extent that both economic activity and the
population were now in serious decline. Indeed, De Beaufort was con-
vinced that in recent times the population of Europe had declined to a
third of what it had previously been. Evidently, such dramatic changes
could not leave the Dutch Republic unaffected.8
It was against this international background that De Beaufort un-
folded his views on the internal or domestic aspects of republican lib-
erty. Although he constantly and implicitly referred to the situation in
the Dutch Republic, he formally presented his Treatise on Liberty as a
general discussion of republican liberty, in which the history of the
Roman Republic held pride of place.9 The present section intends to
demonstrate that the views De Beaufort expounded in this text squarely
place him within the tradition of classical republicanism. To do so effec-
tively, the meaning in which this controversial term is used here first
needs to be established. In the scholarly debate about early modern
classical republicanism, which seriously took off after the publication
of J.G.A. Pocock’s Machiavellian Moment in 1975, this strand of political
7 Blok, Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Volk, III, 390–391; De Jongste, “Een bewind
op zijn smalst”, 49. A more nuanced discussion is offered by Emery, “The Study of
Politica in the Netherlands”, 64–78.
8 [De Beaufort] Verhandeling van de Vryheit in den Burgerstaet, 29–30, 96–99, 142–144,
10 Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, passim. For an important and illuminating early
review of this work see Hexter, On Historians, 255–305. The distinction between positive
and negative liberty in modern scholarship, of course, goes back to Isaiah Berlin’s justly
celebrated Two Concepts of Liberty.
11 J.G.A. Pocock, “Virtues, rights, and manners: A model for historians of political
liberty, vehemently attacked the work of De Beaufort: [Luzac] De Zugt van den Heere
Johan de Witt, 90 and Luzac, Hollands Rykdom, III, 212.
15 [De Beaufort] Verhandeling van de Vryheit in den Burgerstaet, 3, 25. On Scheels see
19 Ibidem, 61–121.
20 Ibidem, 130–132, 139. The quotation is on 131.
21 Ibidem, 124–130. The quotation is on 129.
60 chapter three
of the first half of the eighteenth century see Browning, Political and Constitutional Ideas
of the Court Whigs. The use of classical models in Dutch eighteenth-century political
thought deserves systematic study. For some introductory observations see Grijzenhout
and Tuyll van Serooskerken, Edele eenvoud. Excellent treatments of this theme for other
countries may be found in Rawson, The Spartan Tradition in European Thought; Roberts,
Athens on Trial; Millar, The Roman Republic in Political Thought; Richard, The Founders and
the Classics; Sellers, American Republicanism.
early eighteenth-century political languages 61
25 [De Beaufort] Verhandeling van de Vryheit in den Burgerstaet, 185–225. The life of Cato
is discussed on 211–225.
26 Ibidem, 225–228.
27 Ibidem, 245–247.
28 Ibidem, 276–291. On eighteenth-century English discussions of Augustus see Wein-
Berry, The Idea of Luxury. Also see Nijenhuis, Een joodse philosophe, 104–112.
31 [De Beaufort] Verhandeling van de Vryheit in den Burgerstaet, 304. On the relation
as the citizens of Rome had done, even their liberty and therefore their
republic. Luxury corrupted political officeholders, ruined the old and
distinguished families of a country, and undermined marriage, the very
basis of society. Commerce, too, fell prey to it, because luxury made
people lazy and indolent and desirous to spend their money on worth-
less foreign trinkets. Indeed, luxury transformed the entire human per-
sonality. It made pride and haughtiness replace the sentiments of civic
equality necessary in a free government. It extinguished all feelings of
honor and virtue, promoted a voluptuous cowardice, and thus paved
the way for slavery.32
Perhaps even more destructive of the body politic than luxury was
ambitio, a concept that had also played a central role in the political
writings of Machiavelli.33 Ambition, according to De Beaufort,
ruins equality, tramples the Laws, raises people above their Fellow Citi-
zens, above the Laws, and above the Fatherland, from which arise enor-
mous irregularities, strife, discord and in the end public violence and the
rape and loss of liberty.34
Ambition, the burning desire for political self-advancement, was like a
cancer in the bosom of a free state. It completely blinded people to the
common good and made them willing to do anything that furthered
their own rise to power and greatness. There were two main types of
ambitious men. On the one hand, there were those who, like Julius
Caesar, openly flouted the law and did not shrink from the use of force;
on the other hand, there were those who, like Pompey, preferred cun-
ning schemes, deception and secret machinations. The situation to be
avoided at all cost was that someone, for instance through a combina-
tion of high birth, important offices and permanent military command,
should come to occupy a position so far above his fellow citizens, that
his ambition could no longer be bridled. That, De Beaufort pointed
out, had been one of Machiavelli’s most wise and valuable political
lessons.35
32 Ibidem, 304–348.
33 Skinner, “Machiavelli on the Maintenance of Liberty”, passim and Skinner, “The
Idea of Negative Liberty”, 208–209.
34 [De Beaufort] Verhandeling van de Vryheit in den Burgerstaet, 349.
35 Ibidem, 348–382, 439–440. De Beaufort’s attitude towards Machiavelli was ambiva-
lent. Most frequently, he presented the Florentine as the author of the “wicked politics”
of Il Principe (172–173, 203–204, 234, 313–314). On the other hand, he used the Istorie
fiorentine (in French translation, 303, 528) and praised Machiavelli’s “observations on the
early eighteenth-century political languages 63
Republic” (439–441). On the Dutch reception of Machiavelli see Haitsma Mulier, Het
Nederlandse gezicht van Machiavelli.
36 [De Beaufort] Verhandeling van de Vryheit in den Burgerstaet, 420.
37 The best discussion of the work of the brothers De la Court remains Haitsma
Mulier, The Myth of Venice, 120–169. De Beaufort was opposed to the introduction
of such institutions as the Greek ostracism, the Roman censorship, or the Venetian
inquisition in the Dutch Republic. He did however suggest that the high courts be
given more supervisory powers over the behavior of political officeholders: Verhandeling
van de Vryheit in den Burgerstaet, 485–500.
38 Skinner, “Machiavelli on the Maintenance of Liberty”, 8–13.
39 [De Beaufort] Verhandeling van de Vryheit in den Burgerstaet, 501, 526.
40 Ibidem, 232–237; 472–476.
41 Ibidem, 390–397.
64 chapter three
death, yes are even torn apart by the rabble, is that not enough to deter
everybody from the service of the Fatherland and of Liberty?42
Should not the honest regent follow the advice of Sallust and conclude
that it was best to turn his back on politics?43 The final answer was
negative. For even though the virtuous regent, surrounded as he was
by an inconstant people and a majority of cowardly or ambitious
colleagues, had an almost impossible task to perform, it was still his
duty to persevere. History would reward him, for it was not Antony,
but Cicero who lived on in the eternal memory of mankind.44
Thus De Beaufort used the whole arsenal of classical history and
political thought to demonstrate the extreme fragility of republican lib-
erty. So pessimistic was his analysis that nothing short of the miraculous
seemed capable of sustaining Dutch republican liberty. Fortunately, it
turned out that such was in fact the case, for in the very last chap-
ter of the Treatise on Liberty in Civil Society De Beaufort, in a remarkable
change of vocabulary, suddenly presented the Dutch Republic as a bul-
wark of liberty created and maintained by God’s Providence.45 It was
only through this abrupt switch from the vocabulary of civic humanism
to the idiom of Dutch Israel that De Beaufort could finally escape from
his classicist labyrinth of almost inevitable republican decline.46
3. Godly Republicanism
42 Ibidem, 399. The reference here, of course, is to the lynching of the brothers De
Beaufort, “Een vergeten boekje”, fails to come up with sufficient proof for attribution.
early eighteenth-century political languages 65
creature of God, to try and fulfill the goals given in God’s creation.48
Liberty and religion, he suggested, could not exist without each other,
for irreligion turned liberty into license, whereas slavery turned religion
into superstition.49 The argument of the Candid Reflections on Liberty con-
sisted of three parts. The author first of all investigated what human
liberty originally meant. He proceeded to demonstrate that mankind
no longer enjoyed this general natural liberty and to indicate the way
to get it back. Finally, he applied this abstract theory to the situation of
the Dutch Republic.
Liberty, the author of the Candid Reflections observed, was hard to
define because it was often taken to mean the absence of something
instead of a more positive quality. In general, however, it could best be
described as the capacity of the individual to follow, without any con-
straint, the goals God had created for His world. It was only within
the context of God’s orderly creation that the notion made any sense.50
Once people recognized this with the reason they were endowed with,
they would interpret their liberty in relation to God as the attempt
to fulfill the goal of creation, to wit a life in conjunction with God,
and in relation to their fellow human beings as the attempt at harmo-
nious and disinterested cooperation.51 The greatest threat to liberty thus
interpreted was posed by what the author frequently referred to as “the
violent attacks of evil desires and prejudices” that made men into slaves
of themselves and others.52
These same evil desires were to be blamed for the fact that mankind
no longer lived in its original state of natural liberty. Like ferocious
tigers, men had ripped apart all bonds of love and were henceforth
living as chained slaves of sin. Driven by narrow and evil passions,
mankind had, with dire consequences, placed itself instead of God in
the center of things.53 Since reason had evidently been insufficient to
make people understand the goals of creation and thereby keep their
natural liberty, God had been necessitated to lead mankind back to
liberty in a different way. That way was Jesus Christ. Mankind could
only return to its original liberty if “we become a property of Christ,
who gives us the principle of our Liberty, which is the Love of God; so
that we become free, as our Faith grows stronger”.54 It was only after
death, in a total union of man and God in love, that man’s original
liberty would be completely restored and even surpassed. Until that
time, everything on earth bringing man closer to this ultimate union
increased liberty. And nothing brought this union closer than the law of
love for God and for our fellow creatures.55
From all this resulted the necessity to find a form of political orga-
nization in which the love for God and for our fellow creatures would
be best realized and in which man’s perennial evil desires and passions
would be reigned in as much as possible. Such a free form of polit-
ical organization, the author of the Candid Reflections claimed, should
have three essential characteristics. The government should, first of
all, strive for nothing but the general welfare and do so by means of
love, holiness and justice. To make sure it behaved by these rules, an
earthly supervising power was necessary, because the sanctions of eter-
nity were insufficient to deter undesirable behavior.56 Such a supervis-
ing power, finally, could only lie with the people or its representatives.
Because by nature no human being had the right to rule over another
human being, the relation between government and subjects needed to
be based on a contract. The elected government promised to work for
the common good, while the electors or subjects (the author, remark-
ably enough, used these terms interchangeably) promised obedience
and respect. Should the government fail to do its work properly, the
electors could simply replace it.57 It was at this point that the author
apparently fully realized that he was dealing with explosive material,
for he assured his readers that he was aware of the dangerous nature
of his suggestions, but could see no other way to prevent the rise of
absolute power.58
The next question to be asked and answered was in which partic-
ular form of government these three essential characteristics of lib-
erty were best realized. The author of the Candid Reflections did not
even deign to discuss monarchy in this context. He equally dismissed
a hereditary aristocracy, because it was entirely lacking in mechanisms
54 Ibidem, 65.
55 Ibidem, 66–67.
56 Ibidem, 67–75.
57 Ibidem, 75–77. Man’s status as a creature of God also placed inherent limits on the
nature of the contract. Man was not allowed to entirely deliver himself into the power
of another, because such behavior would be contrary to the goal of creation.
58 Ibidem, 77–78.
early eighteenth-century political languages 67
59 Ibidem, 88.
60 Ibidem.
61 Ibidem, 94–99. The quotation is on 98.
68 chapter three
els, since the entire structure was ultimately based on the maintenance
of urban democracy.62
The author of the Candid Reflections, who had taken his readers from
God’s intentions with mankind to the town hall of Amsterdam with
truly amazing speed, continued his treatise with the observation that
the stadholderate could not possibly be a part of the free constitution of
the Dutch Republic, because it was simply incompatible with liberty.63
Nobody could guarantee that capable persons would occupy hereditary
posts. Even a stadholder with extraordinary capacities, moreover, would
always be surrounded by “flatterers, impoverished noblemen, and the
bastards of the Great”, who would succeed in making him abuse his
power. That political and military power, finally, was so substantial that
it was almost impossible to resist.64 It was certainly true that abuses
could also occur in stadholderless governments, the author admitted,
but their consequences were more limited and easier to reverse. In
such a form of government, nobody had enough power to maintain his
position with force and violence. Most important issues, moreover, were
decided with unanimity of votes, so that the chance of corruption was
slim. Finally, the mutual equality of the members of government, an
equality that would rudely be disturbed by the presence of an eminent
head, meant that regents were not easily influenced, but took their own
individual decisions.65
It was clear that the inhabitants of the present free and stadholderless
Dutch Republic should count their blessings, the author of the Candid
Reflections concluded. Strangely enough, they did not seem to do so.
Indeed, the behavior of his compatriots gave the author every reason
to believe that hardly anybody was taking his republican lessons to
heart. The lavish and extravagant style of life with which they had
replaced the sobriety of their ancestors, had brought many Dutchmen
to the brink of material and spiritual bankruptcy. Such people, who
had learned to hold virtue in contempt, began to regard liberty with
62 Ibidem, 100–104.
63 Ibidem, 109. There were also no historical or legal reasons for the presence of the
stadholderate, the author claimed. In 1581, the States had taken over the powers of the
Counts and since the Counts had not been obliged to appoint stadholders before 1581,
the States were not obliged to do so after that date: ibidem, 104–106.
64 Ibidem, 106–112. The author did not deny that the temporary appointment of a
stadholder with restricted powers could be useful in emergencies, just as Rome had
derived benefits from its temporary dictators: ibidem, 110, 185.
65 Ibidem, 112–113.
early eighteenth-century political languages 69
disgust. To satisfy their desire for a lazy and lustful life, they clamored
for a stadholder and even for a sovereign king with a splendorous court
and a great many courtiers.66 Luxury, evidently, not only posed a mortal
threat to De Beaufort’s classical republic, but also fatally undermined
the theological and juridical republicanism expounded in the Candid
Reflections.
4. Ancient Constitutionalism
66 Ibidem, 125–128.
67 Geyl, Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse Stam, III, 330.
68 E.g. [Van Burmania] Schuite-Praatje ofte Samenspraak Tusschen Drie Heeren, 1–8, 22–46.
On the various genres of early modern Dutch pamphlets see Harline, Pamphlets, Printing,
and Political Culture and De Kruif a.o., Het lange leven van het pamflet.
69 [Van Itsma] Jagt-Praatje ofte Discours tusschen een Groeninger, een Dockumer, en twee
Zeeuwze Heeren, 8–12; [Van Itsma] Jagt-Praatje, ofte Samenspraak tusschen een Leyenaar, een
Groeninger, en een Franeker, 11–13; [Van Itsma] Jagt-Praatje, ofte Discours Gehouden tusschen een
Groeninger, Amsterdammer, en Harlinger, 112–123.
70 E.g. [Van Burmania] Schuite-Praatje ofte Samenspraak Tusschen Drie Heeren, 8–12; [Van
70 chapter three
The endless, often classical, historical analogies and the usually irrele-
vant foreign historical examples beloved by the republicans contributed
nothing whatsoever to a better understanding of Dutch liberty, the
Orangists maintained.72 Neither, they argued in a second line of attack,
did the republican penchant for lengthy disquisitions on the nature
of liberty. Such abstraction was both pedantic and useless. “It seems
that a Republican Author needs no knowledge of the actual History
of the Republic and that a capacity to produce some drivel about the
word Liberty suffices”, Van Itsma bitterly remarked.73 Rejecting both the
generalized use of history and theoretical abstraction, the Orangists
advocated the rehabilitation of Dutch historical and juridical prece-
dent. Indeed, so convinced were they of its importance, that they
accused their opponents of deliberately and systematically obscuring
the national past. The bought pens of republican writers, the Orangists
claimed, were doing their utmost to distort the historical truth, while
their paymasters, the republican regents, were keeping the relevant
documents under lock and key or letting them fall prey to the hungry
Burmania] Schuite-Praatje ofte Samenspraak Tusschen Vier Heeren, 3–9, 16–25; [Van Itsma]
Jagt-Praatje ofte Discours tusschen een Groeninger, een Dockumer, en twee Zeeuwze Heeren, 84–97.
The biographies referred to were [De Beaufort] Het Leven van Willem de I and [Le Clerq]
Het Leven van Frederik Hendrik.
71 [Van Itsma] Jagt-Praatje, ofte Discours Gehouden tusschen een Groeninger, Amsterdammer, en
Harlinger, 153–154.
72 E.g. [Van Itsma] Jagt-Praatje ofte Discours tusschen een Groeninger, een Dockumer, en twee
Zeeuwze Heeren, 33; [Van Itsma] Jagt-Praatje, ofte Samenspraak tusschen een Leyenaar, een
Groeninger, en een Franeker, 108–109, 121. On De Beaufort’s view of history see Schutte,
“Grondvester of belager der vrijheid?”
73 [Van Itsma] Jagt-Praatje, ofte Discours Gehouden tusschen een Groeninger, Amsterdammer, en
Harlinger, 150.
early eighteenth-century political languages 71
74 [Van Itsma] Jagt-Praatje, ofte Samenspraak tusschen een Leyenaar, een Groeninger, en een
Franeker, 1–4, 87. On the accessibility of archives in the eighteenth-century Republic see
Roelvink, “‘Bewezen met authenticque stukken’”.
75 [Van Burmania] Schuite-Praatje ofte Samenspraak Tusschen Vier Heeren, “Voorreden”,
[Van Itsma] Jagt-Praatje, ofte Samenspraak tusschen een Leyenaar, een Groeninger, en een Franeker,
137–138; [Van Itsma] Jagt-Praatje, ofte Discours Gehouden tusschen een Groeninger, Amsterdammer,
en Harlinger, 76–83. On Ulrik Huber see Kossmann, Politieke theorie in het zeventiende-eeuwse
Nederland, 82–103 and Veen, Recht en nut.
76 The classic work here is Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law. Also see
Schuite-Praatje ofte Samenspraak Tusschen Drie Heeren, 16–17. Van Itsma argued that the
often quoted saying “boni civis est, praesentem reipublicae statum tueri, eumque
mutatum nolle” actually meant that a good citizen should keep supporting the original
constitution of his country, even after changes had been made in it: Jagt-Praatje, ofte
Discours Gehiuden tusschen een Groeninger, Amsterdammer, en Harlinger, 145–149.
78 [Van Itsma] Jagt-Praatje, ofte Samenspraak tusschen een Leyenaar, een Groeninger, en een
Franeker, 131–134.
79 [Van Itsma] Jagt-Praatje ofte Discours tusschen een Groeninger, een Dockumer, en twee
80 [Van Itsma] Jagt-Praatje, ofte Samenspraak tusschen een Leyenaar, een Groeninger, en een
Franeker, 120–124. The Orangists were convinced that the ideological origins of the
principled republicanism that had been formulated in the Dutch Republic during the
First Stadholderless Era were to be sought in England. Van Itsma observed: “It was
after the death of William II that people in our United Netherlands first started to
talk like that and began to look for new arguments to discredit Stadholderly rule as
foreign to our Government: It was in those years that a new Philosophy of Government
arrived from across the Channel, in which it was maintained that Kings were no more
than simple Ministers, of whom the people could rid itself at will, which is exactly what
the House of Commons did when it declared the Office of King to be superfluous,
inconvenient and dangerous to liberty and the House of Lords of no use; this original
power of the people was used by those who desired changes, until both Nobles and
Commoners came under the might of the sword. Applied to our country, this doctrine
simply meant that suspicion was cast on all Princes and members of eminent families
…”: Jagt-Praatje, ofte Discours Gehouden tusschen een Groeninger, Amsterdammer, en Harlinger, 111–
112.
81 [Van Itsma] Jagt-Praatje, ofte Samenspraak tusschen een Leyenaar, een Groeninger, en een
Franeker, 132–133.
early eighteenth-century political languages 73
make an exception for the English case, it was here that a genuine
exchange of opinions occurred. In reaction to De Beaufort’s claim
that the monarchical element was superfluous and even harmful in
free governments, the Orangists extolled the advantages of the English
mixed monarchy. The English, the Yacht-Talks insisted, had every reason
to regard their constitution as the most natural and the most perfect.
The King as the head has all the luster and splendor of Sovereignty,
reinforced with all the Power, which enables him to protect his people in
general and to bestow his Royal favors on particular persons; his great
Council, with which he deliberates over the imposition of tributes and
other important matters concerning his Realm, is composed of all the
parts of the entire body of the State; the most Eminent of the people, the
high Nobility and the Clergy, assemble there with the proper splendor;
the lower Nobility, the Notables of the countryside, the Citizens, Schol-
ars, in a word all the communities making up a well-ordered state, are
members of Parliament, who freely expound their interests for the com-
mon good.82
In this wonderful regnum mixtum, the king was unable to violate the
rights of his subjects. Since his ministers could be brought to justice,
evil advisors would moreover never surround the king. The result of
this most happy situation was an enormous increase in England’s power
and commerce and a flourishing cultural life.83
The English example did not just demonstrate the advantages of a
mixed form of government with a strong monarchical element to the
Orangists. It also served to illustrate their central political conviction
that it was highly undesirable and extremely dangerous to change a
country’s ancient constitution. England’s greatness, they argued, was
based on the maintenance of its original constitution. This constitu-
tional continuity meant that the rights and liberties of all groups in
society found a better and more knowledgeable defense in England
than anywhere else in Europe. With an obvious, albeit implicit refer-
ence to the situation in the now stadholderless Dutch Republic, Van
Itsma pointed out that in many countries the fundamental laws were
constantly being changed by the party that happened to be in power
and that the qualification for political office was the favor of the heads
of cabals rather than relevant constitutional knowledge. In England,
however, “a Member of Parliament who does not know the History,
82 [Van Itsma], Jagt-Praatje ofte Discours tusschen een Groeninger, een Dockumer, en twee
laws, old usages and customs of his Country, is a dumb, powerless and
despicable member of that assembly”.84
The republicans responded to this Orangist idolization of the English
political model with the general observation that the equation of old
with good was nonsense. Confronted with yet another Orangist appeal
to legal precedent, the author of the Candid Reflections remarked: “What
happened before is irrelevant: many things have happened in the past
that one would wish had been different”.85 De Beaufort briefly referred
to England in his discussion of what he called limited monarchical gov-
ernment. Such a form of government, he admitted, was not entirely
bad and frequently offered considerable legal security to its subjects.
The problem, however, was that in practice the balance between the
sovereignty of the crown and the rights and liberties of the people
was almost impossible to maintain and that the scale tended to tip
towards the crown. This could particularly be observed in recent times,
in which the growth of standing armies had greatly increased the power
of kings and had led to the rise of absolutism.86 The author of the Can-
did Reflections was more specific. He emphasized the differences between
England and the Dutch Republic and concluded that imitation of the
English example was to be avoided. The English king, he admitted,
was theoretically not as powerful as the kings of, for instance, France
or Denmark. He was no more than a part of the legislative power
and financially dependent upon parliament. His presence nevertheless
constituted a great danger to liberty. First of all, he could make war,
peace and alliances without prior parliamentary approval and could
thereby cause considerable damage to the country.87 Perhaps even more
important was the fact that the king, the author of the Candid Reflections
observed echoing the contemporary English opposition, had a strong
hold over parliament. Indeed, through the manipulation of elections
and the distribution of pensions and places, he could entirely corrupt
parliament and make it eat out of his hand “since there will always
be cowardly souls willing to betray Liberty for the charms of gold”.88
The House of Lords, moreover, was composed of bishops and hered-
84 [Van Itsma] Jagt-Praatje ofte Samenspraak tusschen een Leyenaar, een Groeninger, en een
itary nobles and could therefore not be said to represent the people.
That such an institution was incompatible with true republican liberty
was of course perfectly clear.89 There were, in short, plenty of reasons
to conclude “that Liberty is much more compatible with the Constitu-
tion of our Government, than with England”.90 Thus the debate over
the English political model once again revealed the fundamental differ-
ences between republicans and Orangists during the 1730s.
With these treatises of the late 1730s, the energy the principled repub-
licans devoted to the defense of a stadholderless republic was far from
exhausted. In 1741, one year after Frederick the Great’s Anti-Machiavel
had been published in The Hague, a most curious work entitled Machi-
avelli Republican appeared in Utrecht.91 Largely based on J.F. Christius’s
1731 De Nicolao Machiavello Libri Tres, this treatise mainly consisted of a
critical discussion of previous commentaries on the works of Machi-
avelli from Gentillet to Frederick the Great and Voltaire.92 The anony-
mous author held up the true, republican Machiavelli as a shining
example for his readers. He sharply criticized the way in which polit-
ica was taught in Dutch universities and the lack of good books in
this field, “most of those books being filled with juridical questions
from Civil, Roman and Natural Law”.93 In 1742, an attempt was made
to revive the principled republicanism of the First Stadholderless Era
with a new translation of Rabod Scheels’s Libertas Publica.94 Thus the
battle for the stadholderless republic continued, even though the pes-
simism of the republicans increased even further in the early 1740s. The
author of the 1743 pamphlet The Virtuous Citizen, for instance, gloomily
remarked:
Disinterested Virtue is no longer in fashion. It takes a more than human
courage to deliberately sacrifice oneself for the Welfare and the Advan-
tage of the Fatherland. We leave that honor to the Old Romans … The
20–21.
93 Machiavel Republicain, 27–28.
94 Scheels, Vertoog van de gemeene Vryheid.
76 chapter three
Spirit that drove those Heroes died with them: or, if it survived anywhere
in the world … it is certainly not with Peoples addicted to Idleness and
Lust.95
Despite all doubts they entertained about the viability of their elevated
ideals, it is clear that the republicans harnessed a rich classicist and
theological-juridical vocabulary to their political cause. They thereby
succeeded in monopolizing two of the most powerful early modern
political languages. The Orangist reaction, a combination of the blunt
dismissal of the abstract discourse of their opponents with an empha-
sis on the ancient constitution, was perhaps not entirely adequate. The
ancient constitution that played such a crucial role in Orangist polit-
ical argument was, after all, quite young in the Dutch Republic. The
Orangists clearly needed to find new ways to defend their cause and
that is precisely what they did. Already in 1741, Willem van Haren
added a new dimension to their discourse by introducing the notion
of a patriot king in his Friso.96 In the 1750s, Elie Luzac’s philosophical
defense of the stadholderate would elevate Orangism to new and pre-
viously unknown levels of theoretical abstraction and sophistication.97
With that last development, however, we move into an entirely new
phase in the highly complex political debates of the Dutch eighteenth
century.
1. Republican Decline
1 The best work on Van Haren is Van der Vliet, Onno Zwier van Haren.
2 The full title of the address was Proeve van eene nationale Zedelyke Leerreeden van een oud
man aan de jeugd van Nederland over de woorden van Ezra cap. III, v. 12, ter geleegenheid van ’t begin
van de derden Eeuw van de Unie van Utrecht. It can be found in Van Vloten, Leven en werken
van W. en O.Z. van Haren, 503–521 and is briefly discussed in Van der Vliet, Onno Zwier
van Haren, 420–422.
3 Van Vloten, Leven en werken van W. en O.Z. van Haren, 513–515. The term “gulden
cussed in Joost Kloek, “Burgerdeugd of burgermansdeugd? Het beeld van Jacob Cats
als nationaal zedenmeester” in: Aerts and Te Velde, De stijl van de burger, 106–114.
5 Van Vloten, Leven en werken van W. en O.Z. van Haren, 513.
6 Ibidem, 515–516.
7 Very little has been written about Zillesen, but see Elias, Historiographie der Bataaf-
sche Republiek, 58–69 and Eco O.G. Haitsma Mulier, “Between Humanism and Enlight-
polite republicanism and the problem of decline 79
sion of the history of the Dutch Republic. That state, Zillesen main-
tained, had without doubt reached its greatest freedom, prosperity and
glory around the middle of the seventeenth century. It was then that a
boundless energy held everyone in its grip. The spirit of industry was
general, as was perseverance in dangerous situations. No nation on the
face of the entire earth could better the mid seventeenth-century Dutch
Republic in spreading the blessings of commerce. Indeed, this free
and commercial republic had been a shining example for all monar-
chs of Europe, for it taught them where the true sources of pros-
perity and happiness were to be found: in liberty and trade instead
of in war.8 Yet a century later, this exemplary state had sunk into a
deep crisis. The seemingly inexhaustible energy of the Dutch had been
sapped by the demon of luxury. It was luxury that had caused indus-
triousness to be replaced by idleness, frugality by conspicuous con-
sumption, simplicity by French and English fashions, chastity by sexual
license, and good faith and honesty by fraud and insincerity. To under-
line his point, Zillesen sharply contrasted the morals and manners of
the eighteenth-century Dutch economic elites with those of the mer-
chants from the seventeenth-century golden age. His contemporaries,
he observed, detested work, thought of an occasional bankruptcy as no
big deal, were lavish spenders, avid followers of fashion and devotees of
French galanterie.9 How different had their direct forefathers been:
Industriousness, combined with frugality and good faith, made their
treasure-chests overflow. They earned a lot, spent little, and left a fortune
to their descendants. Their dress was distinguished but simple, their
houses were clean but without magnificence, their food was healthy, and
the one or two servants they kept were simply there for purposes of
convenience, never for show. They therefore did not have to waste money
on daily changing foreign fashions, on the construction of expensive
country houses, or on the upkeep of a throng of lackeys …10
Given the fact that Zillesen considered the commercial classes to be the
backbone of the country, this stark and dramatic decline of their morals
and manners since the middle of the seventeenth century boded ill for
the future of the entire Dutch Republic.
enment: The Dutch Writing of History” in: Jacob and Mijnhardt, The Dutch Republic in
the Eighteenth Century, 184–186.
8 E.g. Zillesen, Onderzoek der Oorzaaken, III, 254–261, 315–316.
9 Ibidem, VI, 84–90.
10 Ibidem, 85–86.
80 chapter four
14 On the use of the Batavian past during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
see Schöffer, “The Batavian Myth”; Van der Woud, De Bataafse hut; Haitsma Mulier,
“De Bataafse mythe opnieuw bekeken”; Teitler, De opstand der “Batavieren”.
15 Huizinga, “Nederland’s beschaving in de zeventiende eeuw”, 507. The rehabili-
tation of the Dutch eighteenth century began during the 1970s and has now found a
monumental synthesis in Kloek and Mijnhardt, 1800. Blauwdrukken voor een samenleving.
16 Recent interpretations of the Dutch seventeenth-century “golden age” include
Schama, The Embarrasment of Riches; Frijhoff and Spies, 1650. Bevochten eendracht; Prak,
Gouden Eeuw; Van Deursen, De last van veel geluk.
82 chapter four
Spectatoriale geschriften and Sturkenboom, Spectators van Hartstocht. A selection of texts has
been published in Sturkenboom, Verdeelde Verlichting. There remains an urgent need for a
comprehensive study of Dutch spectatorial writing, comparable to Martens’s standard
work about the genre in the German speaking world, Die Botschaft der Tugend.
polite republicanism and the problem of decline 83
include Riesenberg, Citizenship in the Western Tradition; Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment;
Koselleck and Schreiner, Bürgerschaft; Smith, Civic Ideals; Kloek and Tilmans, Burger.
84 chapter four
23 The political reading of Dutch Spectatorial writings here suggested has recently
found support in Hietbrink, “De deugden van een vrije republiek” and Okel, Der Bürger,
die Tugend und die Republik.
24 Van Effen, Hollandsche Spectator, II, part 2, 578, 660.
25 De Nederlandsche Spectator, V, 35.
26 De Borger, I, 5.
27 On De Beaufort see Chapter Three.
28 Phillipson, Hume, 27.
polite republicanism and the problem of decline 85
bury and the Culture of Politeness; Phillipson, “Politeness and Politics”; Burtt, Virtue Trans-
formed.
86 chapter four
“politeness for the polis”.32 How they did this may be seen in the work
of Justus van Effen, whom we have already met as the paradigmatic
Dutch Spectatorial author.33
In Van Effen’s Hollandsche Spectator, the concept of politeness (beschaaft-
heid in Dutch) played a key role. Van Effen used it in a number of differ-
ent ways. In the first place, he described the Dutch Republic as clearly
belonging to a select company of “polite nations” or “polite peoples”
and as being as far removed from barbarism as possible: politeness, in
short, as the highest stage in the progress of society.34 At the same time,
however, Van Effen mounted a full-scale and frontal attack on French
politesse. This, he claimed, was an ideal characterized by an objection-
able emphasis on social distinctions, a total hypocrisy in human com-
munication, a disgusting dependence on the whims of fashion, an exag-
gerated attention for outward appearances, and a general effeminacy.
Van Effen made it abundantly clear that such a false notion of polite-
ness, although it might be fit for an absolutist monarchy, could have no
place in a free commonwealth.35 Indeed, he considered a man mod-
eling himself on French politesse to be the exact opposite of a virtuous
republican citizen. Again and again he ridiculed the notion that Dutch-
men should change their behavior along these lines, and again and
again he warned that this would sap the foundations of republican lib-
erty. Nothing good for society could be expected from effeminate fops
who spent hours at their dressing table in order to perfect the latest
fashionable hairdo.
Can a head that spends so much time and effort on external embellish-
ment be expected to contain anything on the inside? Can one expect
elevated thoughts and feelings, manly ambition, a taste for true wisdom,
an inclination for heroic deeds from a mind that has become effeminate
and used to childish cowardice and trivial pursuits? Will such fops, who
play with themselves as if they were dolls, become enlightened and indus-
trious servants of the state or tough, hard, and courageous soldiers? Of
course not. I am convinced that, had coiffure been as popular with our
Forefathers as it is with us, our Religion and liberty would have been
long gone.36
would effortlessly get acquainted with “the sweetest and most pleasant
friend of reason”: virtue.44 They would learn to discern the value of
humanity, simplicity and honesty. They would come to realize that
actions contributing to the good of society could be called virtuous and
they would therefore always attempt to act for the common good.45 In
doing so, they would demonstrate “true politeness”, which really was
synonymous with civic duty and republican virtue.46
Van Effen of course realized that his efforts to combat courtly and
absolutist French politesse and to offer polite republican citizenship as
an alternative would greatly gain in persuasive power if he could show
that the polite republican society he so highly recommended was viable
in real life and not just a philosophical utopia. He therefore needed
an authoritative historical example, familiar to his Dutch readership.
Both classical antiquity and the Batavian past, the traditional sources
of inspiration for the Dutch republican historical imagination, were
unsuitable for this purpose, for polite republicanism had to be pre-
sented as the highest stage in the progress of society. Neither the hon-
est yet rude manners and morals of the distant Batavian forefathers,
nor the austere pre-commercial virtue of classical antiquity could quite
serve this purpose. Fortunately, there was an easy and obvious solu-
tion at hand. For Van Effen could effortlessly project his ideal of the
polite republic back onto the Dutch seventeenth century. It was, indeed,
Van Effen who may largely be held responsible for inventing the Dutch
seventeenth-century as a golden age of the morals and manners appro-
priate to the modern commercial republic. It was then, so he argued,
that honesty, simplicity, industriousness, frugality, practical religiosity,
relatively egalitarian sociability, and a ubiquitous readiness to further
the common good, or republican virtue, had created a paradise of
political freedom and economic prosperity. It was the fatal combina-
tion of the old evil of luxury and, above all, the modern evil of false
French politesse that had brought this blissful situation to an end, that
had undermined the “national manners, liberty, and free and equal
way of life” of the Dutch and that had thus landed the Republic in its
eighteenth-century predicament.47
3. A New Orthodoxy
Van Effen finished publishing his Hollandsche Spectator in 1735 and died
the same year. But his innovative and original analysis of the dan-
gers of French politesse, of the blessings of virtuous citizenship, and of
Dutch seventeenth-century society as the embodiment of true republi-
can politeness would have a very long life. These were the materials out
of which, in the course of the eighteenth-century, subsequent Spectato-
rial writers were to fashion a full-blown myth of absolute contemporary
decline and of seventeenth-century greatness and perfection in morals
and manners. Perhaps that myth reached its most perfect expression
in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, when Dutch Specta-
torial writing reached its apogee and when the appearance of Mon-
tesquieu’s Esprit des Lois, immensely popular in the United Provinces,
had given Dutch commentators interested in the fundamental differ-
ences between the morals and manners of monarchies and those of
republics new food for thought.48 In the mid-century Nederlandsche Spec-
tator, published in Leyden in three hundred and twelve issues between
1749 and 1760, it had at any rate evidently reached full maturity.49 Let
us therefore, in conclusion, briefly look at the way this Spectator dis-
cussed the topic. Although the anonymous writer of the Nederlandsche
Spectator did not deny all merit to the eighteenth century and showed
a vivid awareness of the fact that nostalgia for an idealized past and
dissatisfaction with the behavior of the younger generation were phe-
nomena of all ages, he was nonetheless of the opinion that there was
reason for grave concern about contemporary Dutch morals and man-
ners. Prosperity was dwindling, honesty, good faith and sincerity had
been replaced by hypocrisy and fraud, and status consciousness and
hierarchical thinking had been substituted for republican virtue and
equality. All this had come about, in the first place, because of that
age old threat to healthy republics: luxury. Its devastating effects were
particularly evident in the behavior of the backbone of the nation, the
commercial classes. Abandoning frugality, prudence and honest trade,
they had given themselves over to frivolity and ridiculous extravagance.
They nowadays shamelessly and conspicuously showed off their great-
ness with splendid mansions, costly furniture, noble silver tableware
1 Zamenspraken in het Ryk der Dooden, 45–46. The Montesquieu quotation is from the
Esprit des Lois, book II, chapter 3. All direct quotations from the Esprit des Lois in this
chapter are based on the Pléiade edition of Montesquieu’s Oeuvres complètes, edited by
Roger Caillois. For the English translation I have, in some cases, made use of Richter,
The Political Theory of Montesquieu.
94 chapter five
236; Leeb, Ideological Origins of the Batavian Revolution, 179. There are two brief and
unsatisfactory articles about Montesquieu in the Dutch Republic: Fockema Andreae,
“Montesquieu en Nederland” and Bosch, “Quelques remarques sur l’influence de
l’Esprit des Loix”.
3 Bosch, “Quelques remarques sur l’influence de l’Esprit des Loix”, 381.
4 Maandelyke Uittreksels, of Boekzaal der Geleerde Waerelt, 69 (1749) 568–588 and 70 (1750)
57–75.
republican readings of montesquieu 95
widely bought and read in French during the first decades after its
original appearance is not only evident from the holdings of Dutch
private libraries, but also from the observations of one of the review-
ers of the first Dutch translation of the book, published in Amster-
dam between 1771 and 1773.5 What was the use, he wondered, of a
translation of this already highly familiar and justly famous treatise? It
had been in the hands of erudite and civilized Dutchmen for decades
and for a very simple reason. “Among these distinguished people, there
are very few unable to read French, since learning French and a good
education are nowadays thought of as synonymous”. There was, he
however admitted, a remote possibility that there were some Dutch-
men left who were intelligent enough to understand Montesquieu, yet
unable to read French. For such people, the translation might be of
use.6 The Dutch booksellers were apparently untouched by such scep-
ticism about the commercial viability of a Dutch version of the Esprit
des Lois and signed up for it in considerable numbers.7 The Dutch peri-
odical press, too, welcomed the initiative and regarded this new Dutch
edition as a proper opportunity once again to expound the contents
of the book, even though it was generally agreed that the quality of
the translation was rather poor.8 Continued demand and dissatisfaction
with the quality of the first translation led Dirk Hoola van Nooten—a
Schoonhoven magistrate, the Dutch translator of Condillac and Adam
Smith, and himself the author of a number of moral, juridical, and
political treatises—to produce a second translation. It was published in
Amsterdam between 1783 and 1787.9 Not only did Hoola van Nooten
retranslate the Esprit des Lois, he also added a substantial commen-
tary of his own. He thereby became the second Dutch author to do
so, for already in 1759 the prolific Leyden publisher and publicist Elie
one) 333–338; Hedendaagsche Vaderlandsche Letter-Oefeningen, 1 (1772, part one) 220–226 and
3 (1774, part one) 223–227.
9 Montesquieu, De Geest der Wetten. Van Nooten’s translation was reviewed in Alge-
meene Vaderlandsche Letter-Oefeningen, 6 (1784, part one) 331–334 and Nieuwe Algemeene Vader-
landsche Letter-Oefeningen, 1 (1786, part one) 162–166, 365–371, 544–550 and 2 (1787, part
one) 152–154.
96 chapter five
Luzac had done the same, albeit in French.10 Both Dutch translations
contained Luzac’s “philosophical and political observations” on Mon-
tesquieu.
The above would seem to be enough to establish that the Dutch
reader had easy access to the Esprit des Lois, be it in French or in
Dutch. The elaborate and favorable reviews and the appearance of
two major commentaries moreover testify to the fact that, as in other
countries, the book was thought to be highly important. Interpreta-
tive problems arise, however, as soon as an attempt is made to be
more specific and more exact about its influence on Dutch public dis-
course. Although it is quite easy to find literally hundreds of contem-
porary statements bearing a strong resemblance to passages from the
Esprit des Lois, it frequently remains unclear what their actual source
is. Many of them may equally well have come from the work of such
popular authors as Bielfeld, Justi, or Robertson. This problem can, of
course, simply be circumvented by focusing on those passages where
it is more or less evident that Montesquieu is directly quoted or dis-
cussed. But what does a direct reference actually mean? What do
we make of an author who claims that the people always remain
sovereign, as demonstrated by “Pufendorf, Sidney, Locke, Hutcheson,
Price, Priestley, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Mably, Raynal”?11 Although
it was a declining habit, eighteenth-century writers still attached great
importance to indiscriminately citing as many widely recognized au-
thorities as possible for any given opinion. In the Dutch Republic, as
elsewhere, Montesquieu clearly belonged to the very top of the hier-
archy of Great Minds to be invoked. This sort of ritual and rhetori-
cal invocation, however, tells us very little, except that the President of
Bordeaux was venerated. Dutch writers of the time seldom mentioned
him without calling him “the famous” or “the jewel of his age”, or his
work “immortal”.12 Indeed, the admiration for Montesquieu was such
that Dutch authors frequently apologized to their readers before utter-
ing even the mildest criticism. Thus Laurens van Limburg, upon con-
cluding that Montesquieu’s distinction between monarchy and despo-
tism was not altogether satisfactory, added a lenghty footnote to explain
au Temps des Monarchies; Venturi, Utopia and Reform; Koenigsberger, Republiken und Repub-
likanismus; Everdell, The End of Kings.
20 Venturi, Utopia and Reform, 71. For the general literature on eighteenth-century
thal, “Montesquieu and the Classics”; Keohane, “Virtuous Republics and Glorious
Monarchies”; Shklar, “Montesquieu and the New Republicanism”; Carrithers, “Not
So Virtuous Republics”.
24 Among authors who adopted Montesquieu’s classification without further com-
ment were Cornelis van Engelen (Brieven over de Weelde, I, ix) and Ysbrand van Hamels-
veld (De zedelyke Toestand, 61–66).
25 Wolff, Institutions du Droit de la Nature et des Gens, I, 23; Montesquieu, De l’Esprit des
Loix, I, 12. Luzac’s commentary on the Esprit des Lois was printed in several editions of
Montesquieu after it originally appeared in 1759. When it is cited in this chapter, it is
always from the 1763 Arkstee and Merkus edition.
republican readings of montesquieu 101
26 Esprit des Loix, I, 16–17, 52–55, 308–311; [Luzac] De Zugt van den Heere Johan de Witt,
Witten-oorlog, een pennestrijd in 1757” and Leeb, Ideological Origins of the Batavian Repub-
lic, 68–97.
102 chapter five
through five Latin editions between 1772 and 1806. The book was translated into
French and Dutch. Here, I have used the Dutch edition: De Gronden der Natuurlyke
Rechtsgeleerdheid, II, 211–212. On the popularity of this textbook see Jansen, “Over de
18e-eeuwse docenten natuurrecht”; on Pestel’s political thought see Worst, “Staat, con-
stitutie en politieke wil”.
29 Montesquieu, De Geest der Wetten, I, 99–106.
30 Wiselius, Proeve over de verschillende Regeringsvormen, 43. The text was originally writ-
ten in 1793. On Wiselius see DeWit, De Strijd tussen Aristocratie en Democratie in Nederland
1780–1848.
31 Book III, chapter 3.
republican readings of montesquieu 103
commercial society and its impact on civic virtue. When he visited the
Dutch Republic in 1729, Montesquieu reached the conclusion that “the
heart of people living in commercial states is entirely corrupted”, an
opinion he later repeated in the Esprit des Lois: “Commerce corrupts
pure moeurs”.32 Yet he also realized that the spirit of commerce had irre-
versibly come to dominate the modern world and that it was no longer
sufficient or realistic simply to keep dwelling on the vanished world
of ancient heroic virtue. Commerce, he admitted and even came to
stress, also had distinctly positive effects. It civilized and polished man-
ners, it created peace between nations, and it sometimes even provided
an alternative to pure political virtue in preventing the corruption and
decline of republics.33 Although Dutch readers were greatly impressed
by this unprecedented abstract analysis of commerce, it was entirely
clear to them that Montesquieu insufficiently appreciated the bless-
ings of commercial society.34 They responded, first of all, by demon-
strating that Montesquieu’s admiration for the ancient republics was
unfounded. Most commentators proceeded to claim that commerce
and virtue were entirely compatible. Some, however, maintained that
while it was correct to say that political virtue was not the basis of mod-
ern political life, this should be interpreted as a gain instead of as a
loss.
Dutch republicans entirely agreed with Montesquieu that the ab-
sence of a highly developed system of commerce in antiquity consti-
tuted the main difference between ancient and modern republicanism.
Although commerce had not been unknown in antiquity, it had never
developed into the basis of the entire social and political system. “Those
ancient republics”, Hoola van Nooten observed in his commentary on
Montesquieu, “did not have the extensive commercial interests that
preserve the present-day republics”.35 Instead of simply leaving it at
that conclusion, Dutch commentators dwelled at length on the regret-
table consequences of the lack of commercial activity in antiquity. The
ancient agrarian republics, they pointed out, had largely been based on
slavery and conquest and both these phenomena had been grounded
in violence. Hoola van Nooten devoted many pages to a discussion of
Roman slavery and concluded that it was both inhuman and totally
incompatible with modern European notions of liberty.36 Conquest,
the second violent aspect of ancient republicanism, was judged to be
equally reprehensible. Why, indeed, should it have been any more legit-
imate than the ceaseless drive for territorial expansion demonstrated in
the recent past by several ambitious French monarchs at the expense of
the Dutch Republic?37 The fact that the ancient republicans were living
in societies largely based on violence, Dutch readers of Montesquieu
further observed, had also caused them to entertain excessively mar-
tial notions about civic virtue. It was abundantly clear, Gerrit Paape
commented, that “ancient heroic virtue, once philosophically observed,
loses most of its hitherto so extravagantly praised charms”.38 Ancient
republics, to sum up, were characterized by agriculture, slavery, and
militarism; modern republics such as the Dutch Republic, on the con-
trary, were largely based on commerce, equality before the law, and
lack of expansionist ambition. Elie Luzac drew the appropriate conclu-
sion: “In constantly referring to the example of the ancient republics,
people too often forget that these states have nothing in common with
us except the name of republic”.39 It was, he might have added, not espe-
cially difficult to determine which variety of republic was to be consid-
ered superior.
While Dutch readers unanimously rejected Montesquieu’s glorifica-
tion of ancient republicanism, they were divided in their opinion on the
fate of virtue in the world of modern commercial republicanism. Elie
Luzac, once again, represented the point of view of a distinct minor-
ity by arguing not only that modern commercial republicanism was
incompatible with the stern participatory political virtue idealized by
Montesquieu, but also that this was in fact a considerable improvement.
To Montesquieu’s remarks about the civilizing effects of commerce,
Luzac added the observation that commerce made people more socia-
ble, more active, and more industrious, but also less courageous, more
aware of their perfect rights, and less sensitive to sentiments of gen-
erosity.40 The world had become less heroic, but more predictable and
this was to be judged important progress. Most other Dutchmen, how-
ever, sharply disagreed with Montesquieu’s viewpoint that the political
virtue to be found in modern republics was at best a feeble imitation
of ancient virtue. Montesquieu, Hoola van Nooten pointed out, had
simply been carried away by “the old prejudices of his nation against
commerce”.41 It was both ludicrous and insulting to suggest, as Mon-
tesquieu had done, that true republican love of country was best com-
pared to the devotion of monks to their order, that is to say to suggest
that it was primarily occasioned by a lack of other objects to focus
attention on.42 There were no grounds whatsoever to suppose that pure
virtue could only flourish in an environment of stark agrarian simplic-
ity. Whether a republic was agrarian or commercial in fact had very
little to do with the issue of virtue. A citizen loves his country and is
willing to sacrifice everything for it
because he approves of its form of government, because he is utterly
convinced of the existence of an indissoluble connection between the
conservation of the republican form of government and the sweet happi-
ness, the wonderful liberty, and the complete security he is enjoying. He
loves his fellow-citizens, because they are all equally committed to the
preservation of this blissful state of affairs.43
Indeed, insofar as commerce could be said to have any effect at all on
the republican ethos, Hoola van Nooten continued his polemic with
Montesquieu, it was positive rather than negative. Instead of under-
mining the material equality necessary for the survival of republics,
commerce—if left entirely free—actually distributed wealth evenly. In-
stead of corrupting people, it in fact enhanced the moral virtues.44
Although most Dutch commentators agreed with Montesquieu that
equality was an essential characteristic of republics, few shared Hoola
van Nooten’s confident view that commerce was ideally suited to in-
crease it. There was, in fact, very little agreement among Dutch read-
ers about the exact nature of republican equality. Some, like Elie Luzac,
followed Montesquieu’s suggestion that even the accumulation of great
private riches would not seriously endanger the survival of a commer-
3. Republicanism Redefined
the federative republic see e.g. Grondwettige Herstelling, van Nederlands Staatswezen, I, 29–56.
53 Schulte Nordholt, The Dutch Republic and American Independence.
54 For short general surveys of the period see Schama, Patriots and Liberators, 64–135;
Israel, The Dutch Republic, 1098–1113 and Rosendaal, De Nederlandse Revolutie, 17–55. The
commemorations of the Patriot era in 1987 have resulted in several important collec-
108 chapter five
tions of essays: Grijzenhout a.o., Voor Vaderland en Vrijheid; Rosendaal a.o., 1787. De Neder-
landse Revolutie?; Bots and Mijnhardt, De Droom van de Revolutie; Jacob and Mijnhardt, The
Dutch Republic in the Eighteenth Century. The most recent full length treatment of Patriotism
is Klein’s excellent Patriots Republikanisme.
55 For a discussion of the main characteristics of Patriot political thought see Chapter
Six.
56 Van Loe, Recherches sur la vraie Cause de nos Troubles. The pamphlet was translated
into Dutch in the year of its appearance. See also Van Loe, Antwoord op een Brief.
republican readings of montesquieu 109
57 Nadere Redenen en Oorzaaken van de jongste Onlusten en nog heerschende Verdeeld-heden in het
Vaderland.
58 The most notorious attack on the stadholderate was Joan Derk van der Capellen
tot den Pol’s 1781 pamphlet To the People of the Netherlands. For a modern reprint see the
edition by H.L. Zwitzer.
110 chapter five
65 [De Vogel] Katechismus van het Stadhouderschap, 83–85 and 502–507; [Luzac] De
Esprit des Lois that had previously not been prominently used in politi-
cal debate. In the course of the 1780s, Dutch conservatives discovered
that Montesquieu’s strong interest in the complexity and the interre-
latedness of existing political arrangements in any given society, fre-
quently the product of centuries of historical development, could be
turned into a powerful weapon in their attempt to defend the estab-
lished order. It was once again Elie Luzac, the most consistently cre-
ative interpreter of Montesquieu in the Dutch Republic, who pioneered
this new approach. His Letters on the Dangers of changing the Original Con-
stitution of a Government, published in 1792, were a lengthy meditation on
Montesquieu’s theme of complexity and on the dangers of rash political
reform. The most fundamental flaw in the political thought of the Patri-
ots, Luzac maintained, was the absence of an awareness that abstract
political blueprints would in practice probably turn out to be incom-
patible with the historically formed and highly complex character and
genius of the Dutch people.69
Despite such occasional new insights and despite the anti-Patriot
political victory in 1787, however, it remains true that a real and sig-
nificant resurgence in the conservative political uses of Montesquieu
did not take place until after 1795. In that year, the Dutch Republic
definitively collapsed. The radical Patriots, many of whom had been
exiled after the counterrevolution of 1787, triumphantly returned to
their country in the wake of the French army. Obviously, the agenda
of political thought was dramatically changed by these revolutionary
developments. Before 1795 the opposed parties had disagreed on almost
every issue, but not, on the whole, on the desirability of a federative
republic. Now, partly under the influence of the French example, con-
siderable numbers of Dutchmen reached the conclusion that only the
creation of a republic one and indivisible could save their country from
everlasting political insignificance. The old division between Patriots
and Orangists, in short, gave way to a new division between Unitarists
and Federalists.70 No book served the purposes of the conservative fed-
eralists better than the Esprit des Lois. It was probably Gerard Dumbar
who most emphatically appealed to Montesquieu in his attempts to
demonstrate that unitary republics were inherently unstable and there-
71 Dumbar, De oude en nieuwe Constitutie der Vereenigde Staaten van Amerika, II, 146–150
and [Dumbar], Betoog, dat eene onverdeelde Regeeringsvorm. On Dumbar see Mecking, “Mr.
Gerard Dumbar” and Schulte Nordholt, The Dutch Republic and American Independence,
279–281.
chapter six
REVOLUTION, COUNTERREVOLUTION
AND THE STADHOLDERATE, 1780–1795
On the night of January 18, 1795, stadholder William V fled the Dutch
Republic by ship. At the time he was embarking in the coastal vil-
lage of Scheveningen, the troops of revolutionary France, the country
that had declared war on this “tyrant” two years before, were already
marching through the heart of the country. The contrast with the
two previous Williams, who had gratefully used conflicts with France
to restore and strengthen the stadholderate, could hardly have been
greater. William V’s inglorious departure signaled the end of the stad-
holderate in the Seven United Provinces. Indeed, the French military
intervention meant the end of the entire old Dutch Republic and its
replacement by the Batavian Republic. The revolutionary events of
1795, which were the prelude to important and permanent changes
in the structure of the Dutch state, had been preceded by a cycle
of revolution, counterrevolution and restoration during the last fif-
teen years of the existence of the old Dutch Republic. In the present
chapter an attempt will be made to reconstruct the nature of the
debate over the stadholderate—a debate ultimately resolved by the
brute facts of 1795—during the eventful decade and a half before
1795.
In the historiography dealing with the last decades of the Dutch
eighteenth century, it is not unusual to find the oppositional Patriot
movement that emerged during these years described as moderate and
entirely devoid of radicalism. Both Patriots and Orangists, many a his-
torian has contended, remained obsessed with the Dutch past and with
historically oriented forms of political argumentation. They therefore
did not deeply disagree on essential matters. Thus I. Leonard Leeb,
one of the better known proponents of this view, argues that Joan Derk
van der Capellen tot den Pol and Elie Luzac, two of the more promi-
nent representatives of the opposing political camps during the 1780s,
116 chapter six
did not hold sharply antagonistic political views: “Only a minor quar-
rel about the practical form of the executive power separated them;
much more bound them together”.1 Such a retrospective interpreta-
tion of Dutch political thought during the years after 1780 raises the
obvious problem that it becomes almost impossible to understand the
undeniable vehemence with which political opponents confronted each
other during the period in question. Even the most superficial perusal
of the available sources seems to point in a very different direction:
these were years in which fundamental political and ideological con-
flicts developed. The two main parties that emerged—the Patriots and
the Orangists—were separated by much more than a negligible differ-
ence over matters of practical political organization. It would be no
exaggeration to say that their differences were so fundamental as to
cause a total breakdown in communication. As was the case in other
European countries during these crucial years of what Reinhart Kosel-
leck has called the Sattelzeit, Dutch political debate largely revolved
around the suddenly openly contested meaning of words and concepts.2
Contemporaries observed that there no longer existed a common lan-
guage in which political debate could be conducted. In retrospect, we
can see that they were right. The meaning of key concepts such as
liberty, sovereignty and representation was no longer self-evident and
became the subject of radically opposed interpretations. But it was not
only on a theoretical level that the contestation during these years was
intense. In practical politics, the Patriots did everything they could to
diminish the power not only of the stadholderate, but also of the regent
oligarchy. That Patriotism in the end crumbled like a house of cards in
the face of overwhelming Prussian military power does not, of course,
prove that the situation until the end of 1787 was not a genuinely revo-
lutionary one.
It has justly been remarked by E.H. Kossmann that it would be
wrong and misleading to study the Patriot era in Dutch history as no
more than a prelude to the French and Batavian revolutions that were
1 Leeb, Ideological Origins of the Batavian Revolution, 176. More recently, Leeb’s ap-
proach has been adopted by L.H.M. Wessels. See his “Tradition et lumières in politicis”
and “Over heden en verleden in het tweede tijdvak. Historie, verlichting en revolutie:
enkele impressies bij een beoordeling van de ideologische positie van de Nederlandse
patriotten” in: Rosendaal a.o., 1787. De Nederlandse revolutie?.
2 On the notion of a Sattelzeit see, of course, Reinhart Koselleck, “Einleitung”
in: Brunner a.o., Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, I, xiii–xxviii. For the crucial importance
contemporaries ascribed to language and concepts in politics see also Chapter Eight.
revolution, counterrevolution and the stadholderate 117
to follow it.3 One could add to this that it would be equally wrong and
misleading to study the conflicts of the Patriot period as no more than
a continuation of already existing Dutch political debates and antago-
nisms. Patriotism was a phenomenon sui generis and should be studied
as such. Regrettably, this has seldomly been done. What made Patriot
ideology into such an explosive force was its combination, during a
moment of crisis in the history of the Dutch Republic, of three strains of
thought, which by themselves and under different circumstances would
perhaps not have had such wide-ranging consequences. The Patriots,
first of all, interpreted liberty in a classically republican way as incom-
plete and endangered if it did not include the active participation of
the citizen in politics. Such a positive definition of liberty was in itself
far from radical. As we have seen in a previous chapter, it had ear-
lier in the eighteenth century been put to conservative republican uses
by for instance Lieven de Beaufort.4 What gave this notion a radical
potential was the fact that the late eighteenth-century Patriots com-
bined it with a highly individualistic and ultra-Lockean interpretation
of the natural, permanent and inalienable rights of the sovereign peo-
ple. These two strains in Patriot political thought were, thirdly, under-
pinned by a great confidence in the beneficial effects of the ongoing
process of popular enlightenment. It was the combination of these
three elements that gave the Patriot program of national regeneration
its specific character and that enabled the Patriots to view society as
potentially changeable and improvable. The Patriots, in other words,
may be said to have been representatives of a Revolutionary Enlighten-
ment.
The anti-Patriots, who regarded the emergence of these radical opin-
ions with astonishment and distaste, had a wide range of counterargu-
ments at their disposal. The most important representatives of anti-
Patriotism, however, mainly derived their arguments from the intellec-
tual arsenal of what has been termed the Moderate Enlightenment.
This included not only the early eighteenth-century Newtonian-Leib-
nizian synthesis, but also modern natural law from Grotius to Wolff.
Cosmic and natural laws, order, regularity, harmony and balance were
the key terms in this intellectual universe. Socially conservative from
its inception, the Moderate Enlightenment turned explicitly to political
tie, 142.
4 See Chapter Three.
118 chapter six
between adherents and opponents of the stadholderate. See Van de Klashorst, “‘Metten
schijn van monarchie getempert’” and Chapter Three.
7 For estimates of the personality and the political capacities of WilliamV see
9 Grijzenhout a.o., Voor Vaderland en Vrijheid; Grijzenhout, Feesten voor het Vaderland;
Orangist Political Thought” in: Jacob and Mijnhardt, The Dutch Republic in the Eighteenth
Century.
19 The ‘Dutch-Israel’ variety of Orangism will not be treated separately in this
chapter, even though Kornelis de Vogel may be said to have belonged to it. See
Huisman, Neerlands Israel and Van Eijnatten, God, Nederland en Oranje. Variations within
enlightened Orangism have been pointed out by Worst, “Staat, constitutie en politieke
wil” and Boogman, Raadpensionaris L.P. van de Spiegel, 38–40.
revolution, counterrevolution and the stadholderate 121
During the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the vast majority of
Dutch political commentators were convinced that the Republic was in
dangerous decline. The observable facts, such as the weakened position
of the United Provinces in international affairs, seemed to support this
almost universal view. Both Patriots and Orangists were of the opinion
that decisive action was urgently needed to bring the ailing state back
to its former health. Yet at that point all agreement ended, for the two
parties were in complete disagreement as to the means by which this
end was to be achieved. Insofar as the Orangists, who were forced to
spend most of their energies on countering the revolutionary threat,
may be said to have had specific plans of reform, these largely consisted
of proposals to strengthen the position of the central organs of the state,
including the stadholderate. The inspiration for this view they mainly
found in the work of the early eighteenth-century Grand Pensionary
Simon van Slingelandt, who had formulated a number of proposals
for increased political efficiency and centralization.20 That Van Slinge-
landt, whose works were first printed in the early 1780s but had been
circulated in manuscript before, had written during the Second Stad-
holderless Era and thus belonged to the tradition of the Staatsgezinden,
did in no way diminish the enthusiasm of the late eighteenth-century
Orangists.21 “It is well known”, Adriaan Kluit argued,
nineteenth-century Dutch statesman Thorbecke on his work are still well worth read-
ing: “Simon van Slingelandt’s toeleg om den Staat te hervormen”, reprinted in De Wit,
Thorbecke en de wording van de Nederlandse natie. See also Van Arkel, Simon van Slingelandt and
Leeb, Ideological Origins of the Batavian Revolution, 40–58.
21 Van Slingelandt, Staatkundige Geschriften.
122 chapter six
gebreken.
27 On the Orangist proposals for reform see Schutte, “Van grondslag tot breidel der
vrijheid”.
28 Ontwerp, 11–12.
revolution, counterrevolution and the stadholderate 123
29 Grondwettige Herstelling has always been regarded as a central, perhaps the central
text in the Patriot program: Leeb, Ideological Origins of the Batavian Revolution, 185–195;
Van Himsbergen, “Grondwettige Herstelling”.
30 For the problem of comparing eighteenth-century Dutch and Anglophone repub-
lican discourse see, for instance, Pocock, “The Problem of Political Thought”; E.H.
Kossmann, “Dutch Republicanism” in: Kossmann, Politieke Theorie en Geschiedenis and
Klein, Patriots Republikanisme.
31 Brewer, “English Radicalism”.
32 Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, in particular the third chapter:
“Power and Liberty: A Theory of Politics”; Wood, Creation of the American Republic, 3–45.
33 Grondwettige Herstelling, van Nederlands Staatswezen, I, 61.
124 chapter six
the same role. Just like George III, detested by English and American
radicals, William V according to the Patriots ceaselessly attempted to
bring liberty to an end through his corrupting influence and his com-
mand of a standing army.34 In the same slightly paranoid style of their
Anglo-American colleagues, Dutch Patriots described the time in which
they lived as one in which liberty was put to the ultimate test.35 There
were, the authors of Constitutional Restoration were convinced, only two
alternatives left: liberty and slavery.36
In their reflections on the nature of this momentous conflict, the
authors of Constitutional Restoration showed themselves to be much less
obsessed with arguments from Dutch history than has generally been
supposed by later commentators. Much more important to them were
what they considered to be the true basic principles of republics in gen-
eral. Even when they spoke about restoration, they were not primarily
referring to a Dutch constitution which was deemed to have existed at
some point in historical time, but to these general republican princi-
ples. Only such a reading can explain why the crucial first chapters of
the work were devoted to an exposition of general political principles,
or why the authors were perfectly willing to concede that the Dutch
Republic had really never had a well-ordered constitution.37 While it is
certainly true that the authors of Constitutional Restoration made ample
use of arguments from Dutch history in putting forward their proposals
for a new political order, they simultaneously and repeatedly empha-
sized that the importance of the heritage of the past was secondary
to the general principles of republicanism in their argumentation.38
Among those principles, they placed a conception of liberty derived
from classical republicanism in a central role. The participation of the
citizen in government was, Constitutional Restoration emphasized, abso-
lutely necessary for the survival of liberty:
34 [Van der Capellen] Aan het Volk van Nederland. The editor of the most recent
edition of this work, H.L. Zwitzer, is entirely right in stressing its roots in the classical
republican tradition.
35 Wood, “Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style”.
36 Grondwettige Herstelling, van Nederlands Staatswezen, I, 18–19.
37 Ibidem, 32–33, 131.
38 In regard to the well-known 1581 resolution by the States of Holland concerning
the consultation of the guilds and civic militias in the political process, for instance, the
authors of Constitutional Restoration remarked that only those decisions from the past not
conflicting with “true Republican principles” retained their validity (Ibidem, 99). On this
resolution of the States see Woltjer, “Dutch Privileges”.
revolution, counterrevolution and the stadholderate 125
the past was not as great as has often been suggested. They certainly
appreciated Dutch history as a rich store of experience to draw upon,
but their radicalism was forward looking and in their political program
they clearly desired something new. In that respect, the words of the
author of The Aristocracy were entirely representative of the aspirations
of Dutch Patriotism:
We overthrow old buildings to build new and better ones on the same
ground. We see old shortcomings and we are afraid to replace them with
new and good arrangements? On the contrary, the older they are, the
sooner they need to be eradicated; on the one hand, because the long
period of suffering they have caused humanity gives it a right to rid itself
of them as soon as possible; on the other hand, because by vigorously
remedying the mistakes made by our Forefathers, we will be entitled to a
greater gratitude from Posterity than they can lay claim to from us.49
49 Ibidem, 107–108.
50 Grondwettige Herstelling, van Nederlands Staatswezen, I, 147.
51 [Van der Capellen] Aan het Volk van Nederland, 40.
52 For a modern analysis of the stadholderly system of government in the second half
54 Ibidem, 190.
55 Ontwerp, 14.
56 [De Wakker van Zon] De Adel, 100.
57 Grondwettige Herstelling, van Nederlands Staatswezen, I, 190–191, 330–331.
58 Ibidem, 191; [Van der Capellen] Aan het Volk van Nederland, 52–54.
59 Grondwettige Herstelling, van Nederlands Staatswezen, I, 192. For a heavy emphasis on
the essential importance of equality for republics see also [De Wakker van Zon] De
Adel.
60 Grondwettige Herstelling, van Nederlands Staatswezen, I, 193–194.
revolution, counterrevolution and the stadholderate 129
Even if one wished to argue from the past and from historical prece-
dent, however, it was clear that the stadholderate could not be con-
sidered an essential part of the government of the Dutch Republic.
Expressions such as “Eminent Head” or “Stadholderly Constitution”
should be regarded as no more than hollow Orangist propaganda.62
Not that the stadholderate was to be dispensed with altogether: the
Patriots acknowledged that the highly decentralized and particularistic
structure of the Dutch state needed the presence of such a figure, albeit
one whose “functions are clearly and meticulously limited through
explicit and unambivalent instructions”.63 It was with a view to draw-
ing up just such instructions that, early in 1787, the States of Holland
installed a commission to investigate and determine the proper “bound-
aries of the executive power”.64 Before its recommendations could be
implemented, however, the Orangist counterrevolution had triumphed.
Erfstadhouder may, together with a long and hostile commentary, be found in [Luzac]
Vaderlandsche Staatsbeschouwers, IV, 439–536.
130 chapter six
that the rule of law and civil liberty were incompatible with active pop-
ular participation in politics. Far from being positively linked, civil and
political liberty were in fact enemies, both Adriaan Kluit and Johan
Meerman maintained.65 The Orangists stressed that if anyone’s exist-
ing rights, for instance those of the stadholder, could simply be revoked
in the name of the common good, the end of everyone’s security and
liberty was near.66 They therefore viewed the Patriot assault on the posi-
tion of the stadholder in the name of political liberty as the beginning
of the end of civil liberty.
The Orangists equally rejected the Patriot conception of a perma-
nent popular sovereignty founded on natural and inalienable rights.
They voiced their resistance to this notion in various ways. Some,
Adriaan Kluit among them, simply argued that the Patriots, in fol-
lowing this idea derived from “modern writers on Public Law” such
as Rousseau, Price and Priestley, were perverting the most evident and
generally accepted principles of sound politics.67 For “the best and most
Political teachers” all agreed that the original sovereignty of the peo-
ple had been transferred by means of a contract which had created a
mutual legal obligation between both parties involved and which could
not, except in the most extraordinary circumstances, be one-sidedly dis-
solved.68 To deny this, as the followers of the new “imaginary and disas-
trous System” were doing, was in fact to deny the possibility of any form
of stable government.69 Other Orangists, such as Kornelis de Vogel and
Elie Luzac, went considerably further than Adriaan Kluit. Shocked by
the egalitarian, democratic and revolutionary interpretation the Patri-
ots were giving to the concepts of original popular sovereignty, contract
and natural rights, they attempted to remove all potentially radical ele-
ments from the vocabulary of natural law. They tried, in other words, to
make the modern tradition of natural law from Grotius through Wolff
fit for counterrevolutionary use by means of hierarchical and conserva-
tive adaptations. They denied the relevance of natural rights and nat-
65 Meerman, De Burgerlyke Vryheid, passim; Kluit, Academische Redevoering, over het Mis-
Origins of the Batavian Revolution, 198–211, 251–258; Veen, “De legitimatie van de souvere-
initeit der Staten”; Schöffer, “Adriaan Kluit”.
revolution, counterrevolution and the stadholderate 131
ural liberty for existing civil societies, argued that natural equality had
never existed, emphasized that forms of dominance and social hierar-
chy were an integral part of every existing social and political order
and disagreed with the view that governments necessarily derived their
legitimacy from an explicit contract. Not only did they consider the
notion of permanent popular sovereignty to be an absurdity, but they
also denied that the people had originally been sovereign. It is indica-
tive of the enlightened nature of this late eighteenth-century debate
that even the orthodox-reformed De Vogel did not base his arguments
on the Bible, but on reason and “the excellent capacities of Grotius,
Pufendorf, Barbeyrac, Burlamaqui, Wolff, Luzac and other legal schol-
ars”. That this same De Vogel devoted a separate section of what was a
Catechism of the Stadholderate to such issues, moreover, once again testifies
to the fact that the debate over the stadholderate was intimately linked
with more general theoretical issues.70
After the foregoing, it will come as no great surprise that the Or-
angists also rejected the third and last central tenet in Patriot politi-
cal thought, the idea that the growth of popular enlightenment cre-
ated an increasingly solid foundation for permanent popular partici-
pation in politics. They certainly did not deny the enlightened nature
of the century they lived in. On the contrary: they saw themselves as
the representatives and guardians of a rational and tolerant enlighten-
ment against the new fanaticism preached by the Patriots. That rational
enlightenment had anything to do with popular participation in poli-
tics, however, the Orangists refused to acknowledge. Indeed, they were
convinced that the two were diametrically opposed.71
Such, then, was the general intellectual background against which
the Orangist arguments in favor of the stadholderate may be under-
stood. They did not consider the stadholderate as a merely useful insti-
tution, but as an absolutely necessary part of the government of the
Dutch Republic. They claimed that Patriots such as Pieter Paulus, who
70 De Vogel, Katechismus van het Stadhouderschap. Tweede Deel, passim (the quotation is
on 263). The subtitle of this second volume of the Catechism is “Containing, in the
treatment of man and the state of nature, the rights and duties of humanity and
of nature; as fundamental concepts for the knowledge and the defence of the entire
duty of the citizen”. Elie Luzac’s mature thought on natural law may be found in the
posthumously published Du Droit Naturel, Civil et Politique.
71 E.g. [Luzac] De Voor- en Nadeelen van den Invloed des Volks, II, 18–25. For a more
72 In 1772, Pieter Paulus had written a well-known treatise entitled The Use of the
Stadholderly Government.
73 [Kumpel] De Philarche, 31.
74 Kluit, De Souvereiniteit der Staten van Holland, 61; [Luzac] Vaderlandsche Brieven, nr. 6,
50–58.
75 Canter de Munck, Tegenswoordige Regeeringsvorm, 17.
76 Samenspraak tusschen de geest van een oudtydschen vaderlander, 12–13; Onpartydige beschou-
polish their manners and shed some of their habitual bluntness, but
that was clearly to be considered an improvement. For the rest, every
suggestion that “more lasciviousness, debauchery, sumptuousness, lux-
ury and arrogance, or so-called vainglory” could be found at the court
than in other parts of society was without any basis in fact. A moderate
luxury, with the court as an example, was moreover highly advanta-
geous to economic life and commerce.81 Finally, the Orangists pointed
out that the Patriots were wrong in ascribing an unlimited desire for
the expansion of his power to the stadholder simply because it con-
flicted with his interests. Should the stadholder succeed in acquiring
sovereignty, he would thereby instantly degrade his own status. From
“the richest citizen and Stadholder of the first Republic”, he would become
“the poorest Regent and Sovereign of one of the smallest Kingdoms”.82
The huge factual power the Patriots ascribed to the stadholder was,
in short, non-existent. Their plans, formulated on the basis of this
misrepresentation of political reality, to drastically reduce his role were
not only unlawful, but would be disastrous for the country as a whole.
In a clever argumentative move, the Orangists accused their opponents
of doing exactly the sort of things they reproached the stadholder
for. It was not William V who was acting in a despotic way, but the
States of Holland with their initiative, legitimated by appeals to the
common good and the voice of the people, to one-sidedly change the
existing constitution. They were obviously under the misapprehension
that they possessed an arbitrary sovereign power and could change the
stadholderly dignity as they pleased.
They decided, to put it briefly and bluntly, that they needed a servant
who would do whatever they wished. That is what this drivel, which,
were it not so malicious, we would dismiss as deranged, amounts to,
Elie Luzac wrote in his furious commentary on the plans of the com-
mission appointed in 1787 by the States of Holland to determine the
proper boundaries of the executive power.83 In order to prove that such
changes in the position of the stadholder were unlawful, the Orangists
had to demonstrate that the stadholder was much more than a mere
servant of the States, who could be manipulated at their will and whose
function was at most that of head of the executive power. They tried
to do so by claiming, often on the basis of extremely complex historical
84 E.g. Waelwyk, Vaderlandsche remarques, passim; Decker, Proeve eener Verhandeling, 23–
24.
85 E.g. [De Vogel] Katechismus van het Stadhouderschap, 83–85.
86 [Luzac] Vaderlandsche Staatsbeschouwers, IV, 484.
136 chapter six
When the Sovereignty of these Lands, which had belonged to the King,
went over to the States, they could no longer, as they used to, intercede
with the Sovereign on behalf of the People and thus the Stadholderate
came into our Constitution, to plead for the interests and the Liberties of
the Citizens with the present Sovereign …87
When it came to specifying precisely how the stadholder was to carry
out his role as champion of the interests of the people, the language
employed by the Orangists became rather general and vague. Some
described the position of the stadholder as holding a “balance between
the Aristocracy and the People”, others referred to him as “the per-
manent Representative of the people”.88 All however agreed that it was
only the stadholder who was capable of protecting the people against
potential oppression by the aristocracy. The Orangists were moreover
convinced that the silent majority they were so desperately trying to
mobilize against the Patriot threat fully subscribed to the truth of this
analysis and therefore desired no curtailment of the powers of the stad-
holder.89
Apart from seeing him as the sole protector of the people, the Or-
angists also regarded the stadholder as the only person in the Republic
in a position to further the common good. Where the Patriots main-
tained that the interests of a powerful monarchical element in govern-
ment were by definition opposed to those of all citizens, their oppo-
nents took the exact opposite view. In their observations on the role
of the stadholder as the promoter of the common good, the Orangists
of course pointed out that the government of the Republic was highly
particularistic and that, with its manifold institutionalized urban and
provincial interests, it strongly resembled a patchwork quilt. The unify-
ing authority of a stadholder was therefore clearly indispensable. More
important, however, was their argument that no purely aristocratic gov-
ernment, regardless of the form of the state in which it ruled, was capa-
ble of furthering the common good. Aristocratic governments, lacking
a “common driving force”, were by their very nature incapable of cre-
ating the necessary political unity and therefore always spawned par-
87 [De Vogel] Katechismus van het Stadhouderschap, 518–519. See also Meerman, De
ties. And parties in turn, it was all too well known, were the bane of
politics.90 In the Republic, where the aristocratic element was already
quite a dominant force in government, such a disastrous development
could only be prevented by the presence of a stadholder, whose func-
tion it was to give a steady and uniform movement to the whole
body politic. Their unique and elevated political, social and finan-
cial position, their education and the august history of their house
made it impossible that the Orange stadholders, in carrying out this
lofty task, would ever have something other than the common good
in mind. That, in the view of the Orangists, it was equally unlikely
that they harbored secret desires for sovereignty, we have already seen
above. The stadholders, in short, were the essential “Golden Mean”
and added the necessary “legitimate authority of Monarchical rule” to
the complex and predominantly aristocratic government of the Dutch
Republic.91
Yet even this barrage of arguments from history, law and the theory
of politics was deemed insufficient by the defenders of the stadholder-
ate fully to convey the urgency of their case. As their choice of lan-
guage made abundantly clear, they aimed to demonstrate the necessity
of the stadholderate on the basis of arguments of the greatest possible
scope. Not only the Dutch Republic, but every viable state needed a
monarchical element in its government. Indeed it was the very struc-
ture of the universe, the orderly and hierarchical principles of which
were deeply admired by the adherents of the Moderate Enlightenment,
which proclaimed the naturalness of the presence of a single head in
government. The metaphors and analogies the Orangists employed in
this context are richly deserving of a separate study. Here, however,
we must limit ourselves to the final words, entirely characteristic of this
universal ambition of late eighteenth-century Orangism, of Elie Luzac’s
The Necessity of the Stadholderly Government:
Contemplate the coherence of the Universe; a common and fixed pri-
mary cause keeps everything in its proper movement: contemplate the
parts, they are all subject to their driving force; the Planets are being
moved around a Head-Planet and the lesser planets all around one of
their own. The world turns around its axis; and its parts move, by one
and the same law, to its center. The life of our body is caused by a move-
ment, just as our desire for happiness is the first cause of all our other
desires. Can you name one single instrument which does not receive its
movement from a general driving force? Nothing lives, nothing exists,
nothing moves without proclaiming to us that Civil Society needs a
Head, just as there is a primary cause for everything.92
1 Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution; Schama, Patriots and Liberators.
2 Leeb, Ideological Origins of the Batavian Revolution, passim. The quotation is on 176.
See also: Wessels, “Tradition et lumières in politicis”; Grijzenhout, Feesten voor het
Vaderland, 40. Recent historiography concerning the Dutch Patriot era is discussed in
Reitsma, “‘Altoos Gedenkwaardig’”; Huussen jr., “1787. De Nederlandse revolutie?”
and Te Brake, “Staking a new claim”. The most recent attempt at synthesis is Klein,
Patriots Republikanisme.
140 chapter seven
“No word has been given more different meanings or has made such
varied impressions upon the minds of men as that of liberty”, Mon-
tesquieu observed in his chapter on “Different Meanings Given to
the Word Liberty” in the Esprit des Lois.3 Dutch readers of the 1780s,
who could peruse the Esprit des Lois in Dirk Hoola van Nooten’s new
translation, would most certainly have agreed, for they found them-
selves engaged in a veritable battle over the true meaning of liberty.4
They endlessly discussed liberty in their new periodic political press
and analyzed it in political pamphlets and learned treatises; they sang
the praises of liberty in poetry and plays; they named their new politi-
cal societies after liberty and they depicted liberty in countless prints;
they designed public rituals in which temples of liberty functioned
as the crucial symbols. With this new political press, this unprece-
dented political sociability, and these intense political rituals, all revolv-
ing around the concept of liberty, the Dutchmen of the 1780s created, it
has recently been suggested, a new political culture.5 The question that
has so far remained unanswered, however, is whether or not they also
gave a new meaning to the concept of liberty. Did, in other words, this
rapid and spectacular genesis of a new political culture coincide with a
transformation of the meaning of key terms in the political vocabulary?
That the answer to this question is likely to be affirmative is sug-
gested by two preliminary observations. In the first place, it is well
known that rapid conceptual change was the rule rather than the
exception at the time of the European and American revolutions of the
late eighteenth century. During the American Revolution, the meaning
of crucial concepts such as “republic” was dramatically transformed in
the course of just a few years.6 The French Revolution, too, was char-
acterized by fundamental conceptual change during its initial phases.7
Given this international pattern of conceptual development, it would
be remarkable indeed if the Dutch Republic should turn out to have
gone through revolutionary changes in political practice without the
accompanying conceptual changes. To this supposition derived from
the international context one may add, in the second place, the fact
that the 1780s saw the sudden appearance in the Dutch Republic of a
large number of treatises on the theme of the abuse of words. It has
justly been pointed out by the editors of the Handbuch politisch-sozialer
Begriffe in Frankreich 1680–1820 that a marked increase in the number of
treatises on the “abus des mots” is the most important contemporary
indication of decisive conceptual change.8 In the Dutch Republic, sev-
eral political publicists were deeply alarmed by the new ways in which
familiar political terms were being used during the 1780s.
On February 9, 1784, Professor Adriaan Kluit relinquished his duties
as rector magnificus of Leyden University with a farewell address reveal-
ingly entitled On the Abuse of Public Law. Just as Jean-François La Harpe
and Edmund Burke would do a few years later in France and Eng-
land, Kluit ascribed the revolutionary turbulence of his days to the
irresponsible and highly dangerous way in which reformers were dis-
torting the hitherto generally accepted meaning of political concepts.9
The Patriots, Kluit contended, were completely perverting the existing
legal and political vocabulary by attaching new and arbitrary meanings
to the concepts of sovereignty, representation, people, obedience, and
liberty. Should they (and their international companions) succeed in
their efforts, Kluit gloomily predicted, then “alas! all civil societies will
be overturned, all kingdoms will be destroyed and millions of people
will perish in violent civil wars”.10
Kluit was certainly not the only one to worry about the destructive
effects of the abuse of words. Two years before he addressed his audi-
ence on this matter, Rijklof Michael van Goens, the editor of the impor-
tant Orangist periodical The Old-fashioned Dutch Patriot, had devoted sev-
eral issues of his journal to the rapid “decay of theoretical concepts
and skills”. He was particularly worried about the apparently unstop-
pable growth of “monstrous misconceptions about liberty”. To prove
his point, he deliberately did not contrast the Patriot conception of lib-
erty with the Orangist view on the same topic, but with the thought
of a committed classical republican from the first half of the century,
“the well known adherent of the Staatsgezinden” Lieven de Beaufort. The
Patriot conception of liberty, Van Goens thus made it clear, was not
only extremely dangerous, but also totally without precedent in Dutch
political thought.11 Elie Luzac, the most prominent Dutch conservative
political publicist of the late eighteenth century, shared this opinion.
Not only did the Patriots in his view attach new meanings to exist-
ing concepts in order to reach their ludicrous political conclusions, he
also thought that these “modern Rhetoricians” and “Political Quacks”
excelled in the invention of meaningless neologisms: “If there is any-
thing to be admired in the behavior of these State-Deformers, it cer-
tainly is their capacity to invent words and sayings that seem to imply
much, but in fact mean nothing”. Yet despite such obvious flaws, the
I/II, 40–50 and Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class, 19, 25; on Burke see Blakemore, Burke
and the Fall of Language.
10 Kluit, Academische Redevoering, over het Misbruik van ’t Algemeen Staatsrecht, 89.
11 [Van Goens] De Ouderwetse Nederlandsche Patriot, nr. 34–36, 175–230. Adriaan Kluit,
too, would at a later date unfavorably compare the Patriots to De Beaufort: [Kluit] De
rechten van den mensch in Vrankrijk, 236–237.
the concept of liberty in the dutch republic, 1780–1787 143
12 [Luzac] Reinier Vryaarts Openhartige Brieven, VI, 21 and VIII, 36; [Luzac] Vaderlandsche
den.
16 Kluit, Academische Redevoering, over het Misbruik van ’t Algemeen Staatsrecht.
17 On the many genres of political publishing in the late eighteenth century see
Reichardt and Schmitt, Handbuch politisch-sozialer Grundbegriffe, I/II, 86–148 and Darn-
144 chapter seven
ton and Roche, Revolution in Print. The Dutch situation is discussed in Jeremy D. Popkin,
“Print Culture in the Netherlands on the Eve of the Revolution” in: Jacob and Mijn-
hardt, The Dutch Republic in the Eighteenth Century; Popkin, News and Politics in the Age of
Revolution; Van Sas, “The Netherlands, 1750–1813”. For Dutch pamphlet literature see
Ter Horst, “Over het begrip ‘pamflet’”; Harline, Pamphlets, Printing, and Political Culture
in the Early Dutch Republic; Wessels, “Het pamflet”; De Kruif a.o., Het lange leven van het
pamflet.
18 Engelberts, Verdediging van de Eer der Hollandsche Natie, 104.
the concept of liberty in the dutch republic, 1780–1787 145
political thought remains Leeb, Ideological Origins of the Batavian Revolution. See also
Herbert H. Rowen, “The Dutch Republic and the Idea of Freedom” in: Wootton,
Republicanism, Liberty, and Commercial Society.
20 Contemporary perceptions of Dutch decline are discussed in Chapter Four. A
synthesis of three decades of research on the Dutch Enlightenment may now be found
in Kloek and Mijnhardt, 1800. Blauwdrukken voor een samenleving.
21 Schulte Nordholt, The Dutch Republic and American Independence.
146 chapter seven
The Patriots at first assumed that the lack of liberty they saw in the
Dutch Republic was mainly caused by the despotic power of Stad-
holder William V. Soon, however, they realized that an attack on Wil-
liam’s position in itself was insufficient to restore liberty. They therefore
began to reflect upon the various means available within the estab-
lished political order to guard the liberty of the citizen. Essential to the
maintenance of liberty, they now argued, were the freedom of expres-
sion and of the press, the right to submit petitions to the authorities,
and the right to bear arms. To support these claims, they appealed to
historic rights and liberties, but also to natural rights theories and to
the civic humanist tradition. The dynamics of the revolutionary process
and the growing resistance of many regents against increased popu-
lar participation within the existing order soon forced many Patriots
to go even further. They arrived at the conclusion that the so-called
ancient rights, privileges, and liberties of the people were largely a fig-
ment of the imagination, that the Seven United Provinces had—even
without stadholders—never been a free state, and that it was an illusion
to think that liberty could ever be realized within the existing political
order. The Dutch Patriots, in other words, within a few years came to
reject the ancien régime in the name of a new concept of liberty. In this
section, an attempt will be made to follow them in their conceptual
quest. Before this is done, it is perhaps appropriate to point out that
any attempt to reconstruct the development of the Patriot concept of
liberty will have the character of an ideal type or a simplification of
reality. Not all Patriots followed the route briefly indicated in the above
to the end. Some stopped along the way, others took detours or went
back to where they came from. It is on those who completed the entire
conceptual journey that the present section focuses.
From the very beginning of their movement the Patriots stressed the
fact that the eternal struggle between power and liberty was an unequal
one. Liberty was more of an exception than a rule in human his-
tory. Liberty was a fragile creature, constantly preyed upon by power-
hungry enemies. “Liberty”, the author of the civic humanist pamphlet
the concept of liberty in the dutch republic, 1780–1787 147
The Excellence of a free state wrote, “is like a flower, whose color is so
bright, that every touch makes it fade, and yet everybody tries to get
at it. It is therefore of the utmost necessity to defend liberty with the
most extreme vigilance”.22 In the Dutch Republic of 1780, the Patriots
were convinced, the flower of liberty had almost completely withered
away. It had systematically been abused by generations of stadholders.
“It is not since today or yesterday”, an anonymous Patriot remarked,
“that the House of Orange has engaged in despicable schemes to bring
Free Dutchmen under the yoke of a Count’s rule”.23 Joan Derk van der
Capellen’s famous pamphlet To the People of the Netherlands was only one
of many publications in which it was explained to the population that
the stadholders “have always desired to make us sigh under a heredi-
tary yoke”.24 It was not until William V, however, that the stadholders
had almost completely succeeded in carrying out their evil designs and
had amassed quasi-monarchical power. William V, the Patriots main-
tained, had put himself above the law with the help of a formidable
system of patronage and the command over a substantial standing
army. By propagating a luxurious and dissolute lifestyle from his cor-
rupt court, he was furthermore attempting to exterminate the last rem-
nants of republican virtue and love of liberty.25 Indeed, it was only the
outbreak of the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War that had rudely awakened
the country from its stupor and revived the “almost completely extinct”
spirit of liberty.26 Had this not been the case, one Patriot pamphlet
remarked, William V would doubtlessly have succeeded in his designs
to turn the Dutch into “white negroes and chained slaves”.27
Many Patriots at this early stage were convinced that once the power
of the stadholder was curbed, the most important step toward the
restoration of liberty would have been taken. Liberty was usually still
defined as the rule of law and the protection of acquired rights, as
had been the case in Chomel and Chalmot’s well known dictionary
in 1778: “the rights of a people to be governed by its own laws and
to be maintained in its privileges”.28 A political pocket dictionary of
1782 claimed: “In a free country, the people are governed by free and
reasonable laws”.29 Also in 1782, to give one more example, the journal
The Statesman defined liberty as “a situation where the law and not the
unbridled will of a king or a government rules”. For the citizens this
implied that
they live safe lives under the protection of the laws; that they fully possess
their life, liberty and property in independence of all other people, yes
that they may not and cannot be robbed thereof except by their own
crime and by the sentence of their lawful Judge.30
More than a few Patriots, however, also increasingly realized that in
order not to give the stadholder a renewed opportunity to “destroy our
liberty and bring the Dutch people under the harsh yoke of slavery”,
a vigilant citizenry was an absolute necessity.31 For only a citizenry that
was permanently on its guard could effectively block future stadholderly
attempts to seize power. To reach this goal, they recommended various
strategies. First of all, the events after 1780 had taught the Patriots
how important a force in politics public opinion had become and how
strongly that opinion was shaped by the printing press. They therefore
now proceeded to designate the freedom of the press as one of the most
essential parts of civil liberty.
Guard the freedom of the printing press, for it is the only support of
your national liberty. If we are not allowed to speak freely to our fellow-
citizens, and to warn them in time, then the oppressors of the people will
have their way,
Van der Capellen wrote in 1781.32 His views were taken up in numerous
Patriot pamphlets over the next few years. The freedom of the press
was not only deemed an excellent means to keep the citizens alert,
but also highly suited to expose major flaws in government. Indeed it
was evident, De Post van den Neder-Rhyn wrote, that without a complete
liberty of the press “there would not remain a trace or shadow of
liberty and a Dutchman would henceforth only in name be different
from the obsequious Venetian”.33 A logical consequence of the liberty
der Burgerbewapening, en haar verband met den waren aart der Burgerlijke Vrijheid”).
37 [Van der Capellen] Aan het Volk van Nederland, 36; [Allart] De Vryheid, 249–250. On
side of the Atlantic.39 Indeed, the right to bear arms was what most
clearly distinguished the “Citizen of a Commonwealth” from “the subject of
a Monarch”.40 Having expounded their case, the Patriots began to orga-
nize citizen militias throughout the Dutch Republic.41 Thus in 1784 the
authors of Constitutional Restoration could write with evident satisfaction:
“everywhere our citizens are training themselves in the use of arms
in order to defend their liberty—a liberty which would remain highly
uncertain should they be incapable of defending it themselves”.42
It was in the year 1783 that the Amsterdam publisher and publicist
Johannes Allart ably synthesized the Patriot political position as it had
so far developed. His pamphlet entitled Liberty was reprinted three
times in the year of its appearance and reads like a summary of early
Patriot thought. Allart dwelled upon the threats posed to liberty by past
and present stadholders.43 He highly praised the liberty of the press
and called upon his compatriots to bombard the political authorities
with petitions.44 He considered it evident that “an armed citizenry
is the best guarantee of liberty”.45 Although there were some rather
ambiguous passages in the pamphlet where he referred to the consent
of the population, Allart still largely defined liberty as the rule of law.
His attempt at definition deserves to be quoted at length:
A People may be called free when every person, independent of all
others, is absolutely lord and master of his life and property,—when it
is subjected to certain Laws, designed by itself and to which all Members
have unanimously and voluntarily consented in order to safeguard the
undisturbed security of their life and property;—when the maintenance
of these Laws has been entrusted to a number of the most eminent,
virtuous, wise and respectable men from its midst, who have solemnly
sworn to uphold these laws;—when it is to such men that the general
interests of the people have been entrusted, as well as the judgment over
mutual conflicts and the public punishment and curbing of criminals and
disturbers of the peace.—A people may furthermore be called free when
it is able, without the assistance of Friends or Neighbors, to maintain and
defend itself against public violence of other Peoples or Powers; when it
39 [Van der Capellen] Aan het Volk van Nederland, 34–36; Ontwerp, 50–56. For this
trains itself in arms so as to be able, should the necessity arise, to use this
means against domestic and foreign violence, to resist the enemy, and to
make itself formidable.46
Liberty thus defined, Allart maintained, was entirely compatible with,
indeed was the very essence of the old constitution and form of gov-
ernment of the Seven United Provinces, now fortunately restored to its
former glory by the active intervention of the Patriots.47
Allart’s pamphlet elicited many reactions. For most of the old adher-
ents of the States-party it predictably went much too far, as was evi-
dent from a (probably fictitious) letter from Jacobus Studiosus to the
journal The Trumpet of Peace. Jacobus had always thought and did still
think that liberty entirely consisted of “the enjoyment of a Government
unobstructed by a Stadholderly Presence” and was therefore unpleas-
antly surprised by such in his view most undesirable novelties as Allart’s
call for citizen armament.48 For mainstream Patriots Allart had struck
the exact right note. Thus one of the most influential review journals
heartily recommended Liberty to all those “who have until now failed
to appreciate the enormous importance of liberty”.49 More important
for our purposes, however, is the fact that from 1783 on there also
started to appear pamphlets in which Allart’s definition of liberty was
rejected because it was judged to be far from radical enough. In 1784
the authors of Constitutional Restoration emphatically pointed out that the
sovereign people permanently retained the right “not only to replace
those who exercise political power, but also to change the entire Form
of Government”.50 In 1785 the Leyden Draft argued that liberty would
always remain “a treacherous shadow and a vain sound” if the armed
citizens were not governed by elected and dependent governors.51 In
that same year, The Patriot in Solitude remarked that liberty could only
exist where
the entire Citizenry … possesses the unchanging right to elect its own
Regents, to demand that they publicly justify their actions in govern-
ment, to cashier them in case of incompetence or bad faith, to repel all
attacks on the constitution and the liberty of the Fatherland and thus to
keep a quite substantial influence on the conduct of the Government,
46 Ibidem, 11–12.
47 Ibidem, 283–284.
48 De Vredebazuin, nr. 48 (1784) 123–130.
49 Algemeene Vaderlandsche Letter-Oefeningen, V (1783, part one), 535.
50 Grondwettige Herstelling, van Nederlands Staatswezen, I, 63–64.
51 Ontwerp, 62–68.
152 chapter seven
52 De Patriot in de Eenzaamheid, 204–205. The second edition of 1787 has been used
here.
53 [De Wakker van Zon] De Adel, 107–108 and passim.
54 There is no satisfactory study of the life and work of Vreede, but see M.W. van
Boven a.o., “Pieter Vreede (1750–1837)” in: Vreede, Mijn Levensloop and H.M. Beliën,
“Pieter Vreede. Strijder voor de gelijkberechtiging van Brabant” in: Beliën a.o., Neder-
landers van het eerste uur.
55 [Vreede] Waermond en Vryhart, 16.
56 Ibidem, 4.
the concept of liberty in the dutch republic, 1780–1787 153
chies such as France or Spain. Indeed, they might even be said to have
been slaves ever since the formation of their independent state. After
an initial reaction of shock and confusion, Vryhart has to admit that
Waermond’s daring analysis was completely accurate:
This notion of having no liberty—of having been born and raised in
slavery! O Waermond! it cuts me to the heart—and yet I have to admit
that possessing an abstract right I am unable to exercise is nonsense.—
And that, when this is the basis of our liberty, our liberty itself is more
abstract than real.—Indeed, I have to admit that one might then as well
call the inhabitants of Siberia free.57
But, Vryhart now asked, how was it possible that so many Dutchmen
had suffered from permanent delusions and had always been convinced
that they lived in a free state? Waermond knew the answer. At the time
of the Dutch Revolt, he explained, Dutchmen had for centuries lived
under a single-headed political authority and had thus become used to
it. Like the other European peoples, moreover, they had only just awak-
ened from the medieval “deep sleep of ignorance and superstition” and
they were everywhere surrounded by monarchies. These factors, com-
bined with the fact that during the struggle against Philip II they had
mistakenly learned to identify the assemblies of the States with the pro-
tection of liberty, explained why the Dutch had failed to found a truly
free state and had been content with a semblance of freedom.58 It was
equally easy to understand why this situation had hardly changed dur-
ing the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On the one hand, the
Dutch had been so preoccupied with expanding their wealth and com-
merce that hardly anybody bothered about real liberty. On the other
hand, the established order had been exceptionally mild and had been
characterized by such blessings as the rule of law, the separation of
powers, and the ius de non evocando:
Institutions that, while not making a people truly free, are nonetheless
most useful and valuable—and that tend to make a people, particularly
when it is surrounded by neighbors living without all or most of these
civil blessings, feel that it is free, even though in reality it is not, just as a
wax image may show the shape of a man without being one in reality.59
It was the outbreak of the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, Vreede continued
in a second 1783 pamphlet written in reaction to Johannes Allart’s
57 Ibidem, 15.
58 Ibidem, 17.
59 Ibidem, 18.
154 chapter seven
In the first section of this chapter it has been observed that both
the international late eighteenth-century pattern of rapid conceptual
change in revolutionary political circumstances and the relatively sud-
den appearance in the Dutch Republic of a lively discourse on the
theme “abuse of words” would seem to suggest that the Patriotten-
tijd potentially was a time of fundamental conceptual change. In sec-
tion two of this chapter it has been demonstrated on the basis of the
contemporary pamphlet literature how, within a short time span, the
Patriot definition of liberty evolved from protection against arbitrary,
especially single-headed, government to active and permanent popular
sovereignty. This brief final section will investigate whether or not the
above analysis of the development of the Patriot concept of liberty finds
confirmation in the contemporary conservative pamphlet literature.
Some Orangists simply refused to view the Patriots as more than vul-
gar disturbers of the peace and limited themselves to accusing them of
licentiousness in all areas of life. An anonymous critic in 1787 sum-
marized this line of approach as follows: “A true patriot must be a
swearer and curser; a boozer, gambler, idler and whoremonger; a viola-
tor of virgins and insulter of honorable women; a friend of concubines,
a filthy swine and a rebel”. After several more pages in this vein, he
finally offered a concise view of the Patriot desire for increased liberty:
“Whether with Bacchus’s full cup or in Venus’s lustful lap, A Son of
Liberty will always yell: if I’m not free, I would rather be dead”.63 Most
conservative or Orangist political publicists, however, attentively fol-
lowed the development of Patriot political thought and tried to counter
it with arguments at every single stage.64 Unsurprisingly, the Orangists
firmly rejected the Patriot suggestion that the Stadholders formed a
threat to liberty. They pointed out that the stadholder’s constitutional
and political position did not allow him to rule the country despoti-
cally and that, on the contrary, it was only with the greatest effort that
the stadholder managed to bridle and balance the enormous power of
the aristocratic regents.65 The liberty of the press and the right to peti-
tion the Orangists too regarded as pillars of general liberty. What they
objected to were the in their eyes licentious and extreme uses to which
these precious institutions were put by the Patriots.66 Spontaneous cit-
izen armament, finally, most Orangists vehemently condemned as an
unconstitutional and violent attempt to undermine the existing political
order, although they were willing to admit that a revitalization of the
old civic militias would be useful and salutary.67 In following the argu-
ments of the Patriots up to this point, the Orangists could still place
their political demands within a more or less familiar context. Early
Patriot thought, it seemed to them, was not all that different from the
traditional discourse of “true liberty” of the adherents of the States-
party. It was not until the Patriots started to define liberty as active
popular sovereignty that the defenders of the established orders real-
ized that something truly new was going on and that their opponents
were fundamentally altering the nature of Dutch political debate.
The Orangists were shocked and dismayed by the radical Patriot
redefinition of liberty. “What do you hold of it, true lovers of noble
liberty?”, Adriaan Kluit exclaimed,
What do you think? Writers who deny all obligations between Rulers
and Subjects; who under the splendid name of Civil Liberty know of no
other Sovereignty than that of the People; who consider no government
but a Popular Government legitimate; who acknowledge no other ties
than those among Citizens … ; who think that they can change the
Form of Government when they judge it proper; that they can arbitrarily
appoint or cashier their Magistrates: to see such writers praised by true
Dutchmen; … to see so many publications on liberty while it is actually
being raped: to see all this in our days! Who would have believed it!68
66 E.g. [Van Goens] De Ouderwetse Nederlandsche Patriot, nr. 21–22, 449–463 and 473–
150–155.
68 Kluit, De Soevereiniteit der Staten van Holland, 91.
69 Ibidem, 83; Vreede, Mr. Laurens Pieter van de Spiegel, II, 415–431.
the concept of liberty in the dutch republic, 1780–1787 157
erty that belongs to each individual citizen with political liberty or the
right of the citizens to govern themselves”.70 Indeed, where the Patri-
ots were now defining popular self-government as the very essence of
liberty, the Orangists started doing the exact opposite. Nobody perhaps
did this with more ability and clarity than Johan Meerman, who in
1793 wrote: “Political liberty is, I cannot find words strong enough to
express my conviction, the destructor, the exterminator, the murderer
of civil liberty”.71 It is the very shrillness of Meerman’s tone that makes
it abundantly clear to us that the Patriots, although they had in the
meantime suffered temporary political defeat, had succeeded in funda-
mentally changing the nature of the Dutch debate about the meaning
of liberty.
70 Kluit, Academische Redevoering, over het Misbruik van ’t Algemeen Staatsrecht, 88.
71 Meerman, De Burgerlyke Vryheid, 42.
chapter eight
CONTEMPORARY REACTIONS
TO PATRIOT POLITICAL DISCOURSE
In recent years, scholarship dealing with the Dutch Patriot era has
undergone a transformation. During the 1960s and the 1970s, research
and writing in the field was dominated by a socio-political interpreta-
tion first expounded in the many works of C.H.E. de Wit and culmi-
nating in Simon Schama’s Patriots and Liberators. Revolution in the Nether-
lands 1780–1813.1 Over the past decades, this interpretative framework
has been abandoned in favor of an approach that focuses on politi-
cal culture. Inspired by developments in the historiography concerning
the French Revolution, Dutch historians have turned to the study of
changing structures of political communication, of new forms of politi-
cal sociability and organization, and of revolutionary symbols, festivals,
costumes.2 For all those who have remained unconvinced by decades
of dreary determinism, this is a most satisfying development, which
will doubtlessly lead to a richer and more balanced view of a much
maligned period in Dutch history. Yet it is to be regretted that the
exponents of this new cultural approach to the Dutch Patriot era are
largely neglecting what is perhaps the most fundamental characteris-
tic of human culture: thought as expressed in language. No doubt this
omission can be explained by the fact that the modern French histo-
rians of the revolutionary era, who are so warmly recommended to
de Achttiende Eeuw; De Wit, Het Ontstaan van het Moderne Nederland; Schama, Patriots and
Liberators; Van Sas, “Simon Schama”.
2 For a representative sample of new approaches to the French Revolution see the
series The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture: Baker, The Politi-
cal Culture of the Old Regime; Lucas, The Political Culture of the French Revolution; Furet and
Ozouf, The Transformation of Political Culture. For a discussion of recent developments in
the historiography of the French Revolution see Velema, “Post-revisionistische perspec-
tieven”. The volume that heralded the triumph of a new approach to late eighteenth-
century Dutch history was Grijzenhout a.o., Voor Vaderland en Vrijheid.
160 chapter eight
3 Also see Lynn Hunt’s review of Penser la Révolution française in History and Theory, 20
(1981) 313–323.
4 The literature on the new history of political thought is by now vast. Some
essential statements are: Skinner, Visions of Politics, I, passim; Dunn, “The identity of
the history of ideas”; Pocock, Virtue, Commerce and History, 1–34.
5 Pocock, “Texts as Events”.
contemporary reactions to patriot political discourse 161
Patriots Republikanisme.
11 Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse.
contemporary reactions to patriot political discourse 163
14 This was the case in, for instance, Canter de Munck’s lengthy rebuttal of Constitu-
la République d’Hollande” in: De Beaufort, Brieven aan R.M. van Goens, III, 205–210;
Missive van een oud Regent; Onpartydige Beschouwing, 16–17.
16 Verhandeling over de Alouden en Tegenswoordigen Staat, 23. For a more detailed discussion
his food and drink, his profession, his friends and entertainments, his
entire way of life?”22 Yet there was even more to Dutch liberty than the
rule of law and the perfect administration of justice, the conservatives
continued, for the Republic was also characterized by an extraordinary
tolerance and openness.
According to the defenders of the established order, the Republic’s
felicitous combination of an established religion with a large measure
of religious toleration represented the maximum of religious liberty
that could exist in a well-ordered society. They rejected unrestricted
tolerance or the full equality of all religions, since they thought these
incompatible with the necessary unity in society. In the words of Elie
Luzac: “tolerance in religious matters is always of lesser importance
than the necessity to prevent the things that lead to disunity, discord
and civil strife in Civil Society”.23 Yet the great majority of conservatives
stressed, often to the chagrin of the most orthodox preachers, the
crucial importance of the maintenance a broad religious toleration in
the Republic.24
Perhaps, however, it was the open character of their society in gen-
eral that made it most clear how much freedom the Dutch enjoyed.
The defenders of the established order never tired of praising the free
exchange of opinions and knowledge, a phenomenon that in their view
corresponded to the free exchange of goods and services characteristic
of commercial society. Indeed, they had a great penchant for compar-
isons between the economy and the polity. Just as commerce in the end
depended on elusive notions such as good faith and credit, the basis of
the entire republican order was, according to some conservative theo-
rists, not to be sought in legal agreements, but in the opinion of the
inhabitants of the country. Already in 1749, Elie Luzac had pleaded for
the freedom of opinion and of the press.25 At the end of the century,
most conservatives extensively wrote on the topic. Limitations on the
freedom of the press, they all agreed, were only allowed in cases of sedi-
tion or slander. Yet such cases really had little to do with true freedom
Vryheid, 9. On the orthodox preachers see Huisman, Neerlands Israel, passim. The eigh-
teenth-century Dutch debate on religious toleration has recently been exhaustively
discussed in Van Eijnatten, Liberty and Concord in the United Provinces.
25 [Luzac] Essai sur la Liberté. For an English translation of this important essay see
Laursen and Van der Zande, Early French and German Defenses of Freedom of the Press, 35–87.
contemporary reactions to patriot political discourse 167
of the press: they were about the fight against license. Preventive cen-
sorship, Van Goens among others maintained, was unacceptable in any
circumstances.26 It was Johan Meerman who succinctly summarized the
mainstream conservative view on the topic: “The tongue, the pen and
the press know no other limits in this country than those implicitly
suggested by respect for politeness and manners and the peace of soci-
ety”.27 Republican openness, however, consisted of more than just a free
press. It was Adriaan Kluit who identified two further essential compo-
nents. In the first place, political life in the Republic was characterized
by the permanent presence of dissident voices. This phenomenon was
not to be confused with an institutionalized opposition, which Kluit
held to be unacceptable, yet was strong enough to persuade the regents
to govern with prudence and mildness. Secondly, the government of the
Dutch Republic was—partly as a result of the presence of dissidence—
not shrouded in secrecy, but conducted in public.28
It was Rijklof Michael van Goens who, in one of his most original
contributions to the political thought of the period, developed such
loose observations on the openness of the Dutch republican system into
a general theory about the importance of public opinion in free states in
general and in the Dutch Republic in particular.29 Public opinion, “the
opinions and desires of the people”, should be regarded, he insisted,
as the real basis of the whole republican system. The power of the
stadholder, for instance, was only to a very small degree based on
strictly defined rights. It largely depended on the opinion people had
of it or, Van Goens explained with an explicitly commercial metaphor,
on credit.30 The fact that the existing order to a large extent rested on
opinion made it crucially important to inform the public about what
was right and what was wrong. The perversion of public opinion posed
the greatest imaginable threat to true republican liberty. Yet this was
exactly what the Patriots were threatening to bring about.31
Oranje”.
30 [Van Goens] Ouderwetse Nederlandsche Patriot, nr. 15, 310–311; De Beaufort, Brieven
aan R.M. van Goens, III, 169, 245–249, 280–289. Reflecting on the same matter, the
young Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp in 1784 observed: “L’homme est tellement gou-
verné par l’opinion, que pour régner un souverain droit se rendre esclave de son peu-
ple”. Van Hogendorp, Brieven en Gedenkschriften, I, 407.
31 The changing meaning and role of the concept of public opinion in the late
168 chapter eight
It took those who would later become the articulate defenders of the
established order some time to realize that the threat posed by the
Patriots represented something new in Dutch politics and political dis-
course. In the early 1780s, many thought that Patriotism consisted of
little more than a revival of the discourse of the Staatsgezinden, famil-
iar since the second half of the seventeenth century. Yet Patriot polit-
ical action and, above all, Patriot political arguments rapidly dispelled
this misunderstanding. The most acute conservative thinkers soon con-
cluded that the Patriot program not only posed a threat to the stadhold-
erate, but also endangered the entire existing political order. They then
put up a vigorous fight, accusing the Patriots of the seemingly opposed,
but in fact intimately related sins of primitivism and utopianism.
The primitive or regressive nature of the political thought of their
opponents, the anti-Patriots argued, was clear from the way it inter-
preted natural law and natural rights, from its incapacity to provide
political continuity and from its constant normative invocation of the
distant past. The Patriots, they claimed, ceaselessly invoked a number
of natural rights, including natural liberty and natural equality, without
demonstrating that these rights had ever existed or were relevant to life
in civil society. According to among others Kornelis de Vogel, Consti-
tutional Restoration was a prime example of this pathetically inadequate
mode of proceeding. The entire argumentation of the authors of this
enormously successful work could in fact be reduced to the following:
Nature created an essential equality among people, a situation in which
nobody was subjected to another person; the established fundamental laws
of our Constitution do not agree with our passions and desires; we
therefore invoke that state which we consider to be original and the basis
of our rights; and thereon we will here and now build a new Political
System: it is this, and not the amelioration of real or imagined wrongs, to
which we give the name of Constitutional Restoration.32
The opponents of Patriotism used the same arguments over and over
again. First of all, the state of nature the Patriots invoked was no more
than a hypothesis and did not correspond to what was known about the
earliest human history. Even if one, for the sake of argument, decided
eighteenth century are discussed in Gunn, Beyond Liberty and Property, 260–315 and Baker,
Inventing the French Revolution, 167–199.
32 De Vogel, Katechismus van het Stadhouderschap. Tweede Deel, 135.
contemporary reactions to patriot political discourse 169
Not only did the Patriots apparently exactly know what natural rights
were, but to the consternation of their opponents they also proclaimed
such rights to be inalienable. This, the anti-Patriots claimed, prevented
them from having any conception of a continuous process of social and
political development. A system based on inalienable rights was the
least stable system imaginable, if it deserved the name at all. Not only
could the living never be bound by the wise decisions of previous gen-
erations, but even within one and the same generation people could
constantly claim their inalienable rights, with utter chaos as a result.35
The final reason why the defenders of the existing order deemed Patriot
political thought to be regressive was because of its inability to under-
stand the complex and irreversible development of states and societies.
This was quite evident, they pointed out, from the way in which the
Patriots constantly invoked the distant past, be it the Roman Republic
or the Batavian commonwealth. The normative appeal to the distant
past necessarily ignored such factors as the transition from a prim-
itive agrarian to a highly developed commercial economy, the enor-
mous increase in institutional complexity and the emergence of profes-
sional and technically sophisticated forms of warfare. The Patriots, their
opponents claimed, were simply denying the irreversibility of moder-
nity.36
33 E.g. ibidem, 116–142; Missive aan Mr. Pieter Paulus, passim; Laurens Pieter van de
Spiegel, “Loopende gedagten over de Gelykheid der Menschen” in: Vreede, Mr. Laurens
Pieter van de Spiegel, IV, 571–581; Luzac, Du Droit Naturel, Civil et Politique, passim.
34 [Luzac] Vaderlandsche Staatsbeschouwers, II, 205.
35 On inalienable rights see e.g. Kluit, De Souvereiniteit der Staten van Holland, 71–74; on
the ties between various generations: [Kluit] De rechten van den mensch in Vrankrijk, 377 and
following; Meerman, De Burgerlyke Vryheid, 44.
36 Canter de Munck, De Tegenswoordige Regeeringsvorm, 50–53. Fifteen years later, Can-
ter de Munck would return to this theme at length in his Vrije Gevoelens over de beste
170 chapter eight
Staatsgronden, I, 13 and following. On Canter de Munck see now Van Sas, De metamorfose
van Nederland, 355–357.
37 Decker, De volgens Eed en Plicht verschuldigde Achting en Eerbied, 10.
38 [Kluit] De rechten van den mensch in Vrankrijk. 398.
39 Ibidem, 175–177.
40 Van Goens, “De la Liberté et de l’Utopisme politique”, 18.
41 [Luzac] Lettres sur les Dangers, 102 and passim; [Luzac] De Voor- en Nadeelen van den
nr. 15, 320–323; [Luzac] Reinier Vryaarts Openhartige Brieven, IX, 26.
46 Kluit, De Souvereiniteit der Staten van Holland, 40.
47 [Van Goens] Ouderwetse Nederlandsche Patriot, nr. 34–36, 180–230.
172 chapter eight
48 Kluit, Academische Redevoering, over het Misbruik van ’t Algemeen Staatsrecht, 28.
49 [Kluit] De rechten van den mensch in Vrankrijk, 66; Meerman, De Burgerlyke Vryheid, 42.
50 Decker, Proeve eener Verhandeling, 35.
contemporary reactions to patriot political discourse 173
Vryheid, 27.
52 Van Hogendorp, Brieven en Gedenkschriften, II, 280. On Van Hogendorp’s political
economy see Overmeer, De economische denkbeelden van Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp.
53 Verhandeling over de Alouden en Tegenswoordigen Staat, 36; Welmeenende en Trouwhartige
der, 6; [Luzac] De Voor- en Nadeelen van den Invloed des Volks, III, 150–153.
55 Decker, Proeve eener Verhandeling, 12.
56 E.g. Samenspraak tusschen de geest van een oudtydschen vaderlander, 7.
57 [Van Goens] Ouderwetse Nederlandsche Patriot, nr. 5, 100.
174 chapter eight
Staatsrecht, 51–64; Decker, Proeve eener Verhandeling, 34–36; Onpartydige beschouwing, van de
voorledene en tegenwoordige staatsgesteldheid, 26–29.
contemporary reactions to patriot political discourse 175
Far from being satisfied with simply proving that the concepts used
by the Patriots were deficient, the conservatives also wanted to demon-
strate that a popular government could not possibly function in prac-
tice. Those who desired it were therefore either unrealistic utopians
or completely insincere. Would the introduction of a representative
democracy, the defenders of the status quo asked, mean a real improve-
ment for the inhabitants of the Dutch Republic?63 Johan Meerman’s
answer was very clear indeed. Anybody who seriously reflected upon
that system, he observed, would soon be forced to conclude that it
brought no more than imaginary advantages to the individual. Let us
suppose, he wrote, that Holland has 250.000 voters, who choose 500
representatives.
A wonderful and invaluable blessing no doubt, and worthy to be bought
with streams of blood, to have a one-two hundred and fifty thousand’s
part in the sovereignty of my Fatherland, a part which I can, however,
not exercise, and a one-five hundredth part in choosing a representative,
who will exercise sovereignty with four hundred and ninety nine others
in my name!64
But even if one thought all this worthwhile, there still remained the
problem of competence. Did the Patriots seriously wish to give every-
body a vote? That would obviously be ridiculous, because most Dutch-
men knew nothing about politics and were therefore incapable of judg-
ing and choosing. The inevitable result of general participation in poli-
tics would be the rise and rule of unscrupulous demagogues.65 Even the
Patriots admitted as much, their opponents pointed out, and wanted to
limit the right to vote to notables. Yet this meant giving up their own
democratic ideal, Elie Luzac observed in his attack on that “Catechism
of the Patriots”, Van der Capellen’s To the People of the Netherlands.66 If
From whichever side one … looks at your System, it always turns out
to be a thoroughly confusing maze, in which it is impossible to take even
one step without running the danger of getting so utterly lost that no way
out is possible.71
All this, of course, would not happen. By the end of the eighteenth
century the days of Dutch greatness as a world power were long gone,
never to return. The factual inaccuracy of the president’s predictions,
however, does not detract from the importance of his address from an
ideological point of view. It reveals a whole range of revolutionary polit-
ical concepts and convictions that had found widespread acceptance
among the Dutch by 1798. Among the most important of these was a
new view of the role and meaning of a constitution. For the Batavian
revolutionaries of 1798 it had become almost self-evident that a consti-
tution was a written document, containing both an enumeration of the
rights of man and citizen and a description of the structure of republi-
can government. This document, moreover, was fundamentally differ-
ent in nature from ordinary legislation. It was believed to constitute the
basis not only of the realm of high politics, but also of society as a whole
and was therefore frequently referred to as the social contract. Such a
contract, the Batavian revolutionaries maintained, was only legitimate
if approved by the people and could only be changed by the people. It
was, in other words, the most important expression of the doctrine of
inalienable popular sovereignty. Given all this, it is understandable that
the constitution was regarded as of central importance to the entire
functioning of society. The people shaped it, but once established, it in
turn shaped the behavior of the people. A good constitution was not
only believed to establish liberty, but also to be the foundation of the
virtue and happiness of the entire society.
It will be the purpose of this chapter to explore the way in which this
novel, revolutionary and extremely ambitious interpretation of the con-
cept of a constitution gradually emerged during the last two decades of
the Dutch eighteenth century. The first section will discuss the chang-
ing meaning of constitutionalism during the second half of the eigh-
teenth century. Section two treats the way in which the Dutch, against
the background of this international conceptual development and in
the context of a deep domestic political crisis, relatively suddenly came
to the conclusion that the Dutch Republic had no proper constitution.
Section three will look at the practical and theoretical difficulties the
Dutch experienced when, after 1795, they finally had the opportunity
to write an entirely new constitution. The fourth and last section will
briefly discuss the final result of late eighteenth-century Dutch constitu-
tionalism, the Staatsregeling of 1798.
dutch constitutionalism 181
1. Eighteenth-Century Constitutionalism
2 This is the central thesis of two great collaborative works on conceptual history:
Brunner a.o., Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe and Reichardt and Schmitt, Handbuch politisch-
sozialer Grundbegriffe.
3 Reinhart Koselleck, “Einleitung” in: Brunner a.o., Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, I, xiv.
4 For discussions of the eighteenth-century development of the concept of a con-
stitution see, among others, Heinz Mohnhaupt and Dieter Grimm, “Verfassung” in:
Brunner a.o., Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, VI, 831–899; Dippel, Die Anfänge des Konstitu-
tionalismus in Deutschland, 7–44; Wolfgang Schmale, “Constitution, Constitutionnel” in:
Reichardt and Schmitt, Handbuch politisch-sozialer Grundbegriffe, XII, 31–63; Duclos, La
notion de constitution; Marina Valensise, “La constitution française” in: Baker, The Political
Culture of the Old Regime, 441–467; Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, 252–305; Graham
Maddox, “Constitution” in: Ball a.o., Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, 50–67. See
also the literature on the American Revolution cited in note nine below.
5 Montesquieu, Oeuvres complètes, II, 396–407. Carcassonne, Montesquieu et le prob-
the fundamental rules or laws of political life. This is evident in, for
instance, Emmerich de Vattel’s authoritative 1758 definition of a con-
stitution: “Le règlement fondamental qui détermine la manière dont
l’autorité publique doit être exercée, est ce qui forme la constitution de
l’état”.6 These fundamental rules, it was argued within the eighteenth
century language of natural law, constituted a sort of contract that at
some point had been approved, either implicitly or explicitly, by the
people, who were thought to be the original sovereign. All these notions
were further developed in the remaining decades of the eighteenth cen-
tury. It was, of course, Rousseau who most radically appropriated and
transformed the existing vocabulary of natural law to develop his rev-
olutionary theory of the social contract and the inalienable character
of popular sovereignty.7 It was left to the American revolutionaries,
however, to develop ways in which the theoretical abstractions about
contracts, constitutions and popular sovereignty could be implemented.
Indeed, the American process of constitution writing, first on the level
of the separate states and subsequently on the national level, was the
first significant opportunity for the more radical political ideas of the
Enlightenment to be put into practice. Europe watched breathlessly.8
The Americans insisted, first of all, that if a state could be said to have
a constitution, this had to be a written document—a thought not unre-
lated to the fact that most American colonies already had written char-
ters functioning as fundamental laws before the American revolution.
The Americans also found a way to implement the idea that a constitu-
tion was fundamentally different from normal legislation and therefore
ought to be approved directly by the sovereign people: they developed
the instrument of the constitutional convention. Finally, the American
Revolution firmly established the notion that no constitution was com-
plete without an accompanying bill of rights.9 This requirement would,
of course, return in article 16 of the French Declaration of the Rights of
The Age of the Democratic Revolution and Venturi, The End of the Old Regime in Europe, 1776–
1789, I, 3–143. On its influence in the Dutch Republic see Schulte Nordholt, The Dutch
Republic and American Independence.
9 The literature on the constitutionalism of the American Revolution is vast. Indis-
pensable are Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution; Wood, Creation of the Amer-
ican Republic and Radicalism of the American Revolution; Adams, The First American Constitu-
tions; Ball and Pocock, Conceptual Change and the Constitution; Rakove, Original Meanings.
dutch constitutionalism 183
Man and Citizen of 1789, which states that “toute societé dans laquelle la
garantie des droits n’est pas assurée … n’a point de constitution”.10
From the above it is clear that the development of the meaning of the
concept of a constitution had been rapid and spectacular in the second
half of the eighteenth century. Whereas Montesquieu, whose own use
of the term constitution was relatively new, in 1748 praised the English
constitution as the embodiment of liberty, less than half a century later
that great international revolutionary Thomas Paine could simply deny
that England had a constitution.11 He had come to see government
and constitution as radically different entities, as is clear from the first
sentence of the chapter “Of Constitutions” in his Rights of Man:
That men mean distinct and separate things when they speak of consti-
tutions and of governments is evident; or, why are those terms distinctly
and separately used? A constitution is not the act of a government, but
of a people constituting a government; and government without a con-
stitution, is power without a right.12
For Paine, a constitution was a written document, which not only
had to specify the structure and the powers of government, but also
had to contain a declaration of the rights of man and citizen. Such
a constitution, moreover, exclusively derived its legitimacy from the
fact that it had been framed by a constitutional convention and had
been approved by the sovereign people. States that did not meet these
requirements simply had no constitution.13 The difference between
Montesquieu and Paine, it is important to point out, went much deeper
than disagreement over the meaning of a concept. That disagreement
reflected two fundamentally different mental worlds. Montesquieu be-
longed to the moderate world of the early Enlightenment, with its deep
respect for history and the existing social and political structures. He
was still a stranger to the later notion that man was the complete mas-
ter of his own political fate and could simply draw up constitutions at
will. Paine, on the other hand, was in all respects a representative of
the late eighteenth-century Revolutionary Enlightenment, with its lim-
itless confidence in the political perfectibility of man and society and its
10 Rials, La déclaration des droits de l’homme, 26. On the French Declaration see also
Gauchet, La révolution des droits de l’homme; Van Kley, The French Idea of Freedom; Hunt,
The French Revolution and Human Rights.
11 Montesquieu’s view of the English constitution is discussed in Granpre Molière,
14 For the distinction between these two types of Enlightenment see May, The Enlight-
enment in America. For the relationship between various Enlightenments and polical
thought also see Jacob, Radical Enlightenment; Velema, Enlightenment and Conservatism;
Israel, Radical Enlightenment.
dutch constitutionalism 185
2. The Patriots Discover that the Republic does not have a Constitution
Should anyone have told the Dutch in the 1770s that they did not have
a constitution and were no freer than the inhabitants of the surround-
ing monarchies, he would no doubt have met with astonishment and
incomprehension. For at that time the Dutch were still convinced that
their Republic belonged to the freest countries in the world and that
the 1579 Union of Utrecht was their constitution. Indeed, in 1775 Pieter
Paulus, who would subsequently go a long way and become the first
president of the first National Assembly some twenty years later, pub-
lished the first volume of his lengthy work on that Union. At the very
beginning of it, he insisted that the Union was the only fundamental
law of the Dutch. To this he added that he could not read this great
document without being overwhelmed by emotion and without being
impressed by the enormous wisdom of its authors.17 Paulus’s sentiments
were echoed four years later, when the bicentenary of the Union was
15 The phrase, of course, is R.R. Palmer’s. See Palmer, The Age of the Democratic
Revolution.
16 De Beaufort, Brieven aan R.M. van Goens, I, 91.
17 Paulus, Verklaring der Unie van Utrecht, I, Opdragt. On Paulus see De Gou, Biografische
cratie in context” and Popkin, “Dutch Patriots, French Journalists, and Declarations of
Rights”.
dutch constitutionalism 187
between 1784 and 1786. The authors of this extremely important work
that marks the transition to a new concept of constitutionalism started
out with the intention of recovering something valuable from the Dutch
past, but largely failed in their attempt. They did so, because they were
no longer using the concept of constitution in the sense of form of gov-
ernment, but in the sense of a written set of rules specifying both indi-
vidual rights and the structure of government. The Dutch state, the
authors of Constitutional Restoration observed, had been imperfect since
its sixteenth century beginnings and its hybrid structure was incompati-
ble with “the essential principles of Republican Constitutions”.22 Those
essential principles could be observed in action in the “new Ameri-
can Republics” and it was high time that the Dutch Republic went the
same way. “The crucial thing that needs to happen is that the Nation
shows itself and that a complete set of Political and Civil laws is drawn
up in its name”.23 The authors of Constitutional Restoration, it is clear,
basically denied that the Dutch Republic had ever had a proper repub-
lican constitution. To them, the notion of constitutional restoration no
longer primarily referred to something to be found in the Dutch past,
but to the introduction of the universal republican principles of popular
sovereignty and a written constitution. They did however still expect
that the political practices of the glorious Dutch republican past would
supply important building blocks for the constitutional project they had
in mind.24 More radical Patriots such as Pieter Vreede and Petrus de
Wakker van Zon, however, were already abandoning that notion by
the time the work was published. Starting from the conviction that
only a document based on and enshrining the inalienable sovereignty
of the people could be called a proper republican constitution, they
rejected the entire Dutch republican past, which had never seen such a
document, as a period of unmitigated slavery. What was needed, they
insisted, was a clean break with the despotism characteristic of the old
Dutch Republic and the creation of an entirely new one, based on the
principles of enlightened republicanism.25
tion see Leeb, Ideological Origins of the Batavian Revolution, 185–195; Van Himsbergen,
“Grondwettige Herstelling” and Chapter Six.
23 Grondwettige Herstelling, van Nederlands Staatswezen, I, 133, 139.
24 Ibidem, 139–140.
25 [Vreede] Waermond and Vryhart and Beoordelend en ophelderend Verslag; [De Wakker van
The Dutch had evidently come a long way. Within a few years from
celebrating the bicentenary of the Union of Utrecht, they had discov-
ered that this once revered document could in no way qualify as a
constitution, for it was neither based on the sovereignty of the people,
nor did it contain a guarantee of rights or a description of the structure
and limits of government. Their desperate search for a constitutionally
usable Dutch past, conducted under the name of constitutional restora-
tion, moreover quickly led them to the conclusion that the country had
never had a proper republican constitution. Indeed, by the mid 1780s
the most radical Patriots were more than ready altogether to abandon
the Dutch old regime and to replace it with a new republican constitu-
tion. They would have to wait for eight more years, however, for their
movement was forcibly put down by the Orangist counter-revolution
of 1787, backed by England and Prussia.26 In the years between the
counter-revolution of 1787 and the final triumph of the Patriot cause—
with the help of the French armies—in 1795, radical thinking about the
need for an entirely new constitution considerably gained in strength.
Respect for the Union of Utrecht as the fundamental law of the Dutch
Republic declined to an absolute minimum, as witnessed by Samuel
Wiselius’s famous 1793 remark that the Union was a sorry piece of
“political nonsense”.27 The example of the French Revolution, more-
over, reinforced Patriot confidence that it was indeed possible to found
an entirely new political order on philosophical principles. If such a
thing could be done on the hierarchical ruins of an absolute monarchy,
then it could certainly be done on the remains of a much more egali-
tarian and freer old republic.28 Theory, however, is always easier than
practice. When the year 1795 finally came, most Patriots agreed that
what they wanted was a new republic based on popular sovereignty
and possessed of a written constitution. They would soon find out that
these seemingly clear and simple desires were much more difficult to
realize than they had expected. It is to their practical struggle with the
new concept of a constitution that we now turn.
of this important figure see Leeb, Ideological Origins of the Batavian Revolution, 229–251.
28 For the development of Patriotism between 1787 and 1795 see Baartmans, Hollandse
29 For an overview of the history of the first years of the Batavian Republic see
Schama, Patriots and Liberators, 211–354. An interpretation of these years with an empha-
sis on political culture may be found in Van Sas, De metamorfose van Nederland, 277–291.
For the various declarations of rights in 1795 see Van der Burg and Boels, Tweehonderd
jaar rechten van de mens in Nederland and the older but still valuable Goslinga, De rechten van
den mensch en burger.
30 On De Gou’s work see Grondwetgeving 1795–1806.
31 The dilemma is depicted on the title plate of [Swildens] Gelykheid-Vryheid-Broeder-
32 [Swildens] Circulaire Missive van eenen vryen Hollandschen burger, 59. On Swildens see
Dutch character to the constitution also surfaced in long debates over terminology. For
many Batavians, for instance, the word constitution was too foreign. The first Dutch
constitution of 1798 was therefore called Staatsregeling. Ibidem, 173–175.
34 [Swildens] Gelykheid-Vryheid-Broederschap. 1795. Politiek Belang-Boek voor dit provisioneel
Tydperk, 179.
dutch constitutionalism 191
an entirely new founding. Not only was there nothing to restore, they
maintained, there was also nothing to renovate. The old republic had
been illegitimate in all of its aspects and a monstrous despotism in its
political practice, “a perpetual and arbitrary tyranny, worse than that
of the Counts”.35 Nothing from the old republic was worth preserving
and certainly nothing constitutional. For what could that possibly be?
“Where can that old constitution be found?”, an anonymous pamphle-
teer asked and proceeded to supply the answer himself: “The previous
government was based on old privileges, customs, abuses and usurpa-
tions. It is therefore clear that our country has never had a fixed Con-
stitution, which has been approved by the people”.36 What was needed
was a completely new political order founded on popular sovereignty
and the rights of man. Remarkably enough, the building metaphor also
belonged to the favorite rhetorical devices of the radicals, albeit in a
very different way. “Politics is very much like architecture”, the enlight-
ened historian and politician Cornelis Zillesen remarked,
if the architect chooses to leave some parts of a poorly constructed old
dwelling standing and decides to tear down and to renovate other parts,
… the result is and remains misshapen; but if the architect decides to
tear everything down to the ground, he will thereafter be able to raise a
regular building.37
There were, these theorists maintained, seven separate peoples and the
new constitution needed to perpetuate this situation by instituting a fed-
eral republic. It has not been uncommon in modern historiography to
associate this federalist position with political conservatism.39 Nothing,
however, could be further from the truth. It was indeed the case that
the unitary constitution that was finally accepted in 1798 was mainly
backed by political radicals, but a close study of the federalist argument
clearly shows that it was anything but a simple defense of the old Dutch
system. As the American example showed, federalists such as Gerard
Dumbar maintained, a well-ordered republic was best organized along
federalist lines. America, after all, had become a stable popular repub-
lic, whereas the unitary system of France had rapidly spawned the ter-
ror.40 That federalism could be as forward looking as unitarism is also
evident from the work of the Zeeland author Van Sonsbeeck. It was
very telling, he observed in 1795, “that in the most enlightened times of
the world … a Franklin and a Washington have not hesitated to divide
their liberated and sovereign people into independent provinces and to
give each of these quasi-sovereign powers”.41 He went on to demon-
strate at great length that a federal republic best corresponded with
the political ideals of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, hardly a theorist known
for his political conservatism.42 Yet the radical Dutch federalists had
the misfortune that for most Batavian revolutionaries federalism had
become irretrievably associated with the despotic and aristocratic struc-
ture of the old republic. It was moreover quite difficult for them to
dissociate themselves from those groups who advocated federalism out
of genuinely conservative convictions. The cause of revolutionary fed-
eralism was therefore doomed to fail—and we all know it did.
Yet even among those who were willing to believe that, once pop-
ular sovereignty had been accepted, there was one Batavian nation or
people, there was substantial disagreement about who should give this
people a constitution. Looking at the French example, it was evident for
most revolutionaries that a constitution should be written by a national
dat een onverdeelde Regeeringsvorm. On Dumbar see Mecking, “Mr. Gerard Dumbar” and
Schulte Nordholt, The Dutch Republic and American Independence, 279–281.
41 [Van Sonsbeeck] Verhandeling over het Nadeel eener Nationaale Conventie, 48.
42 On the role of Rousseau’s political thought in the Batavian revolution see Gob-
assembly elected by the sovereign people. But there were also theorists
who regarded this as a procedure highly dangerous to liberty. Thus in
1795 the learned jurist H.C. Cras published a pamphlet entitled Should a
Constitution precede the National Convention or a National Convention the Consti-
tution? No matter whether exercised by a king or by an elected assembly,
Cras argued, it would always remain true that unlimited power equaled
tyranny. “The French citizens”, he observed,
who elected Marat, Robespierre and their followers were acting in good
faith; those monsters were the fellow citizens of the innocent victims they
killed. This could never have happened, had there been a Constitution
before the National Convention, limiting its power.43
Cras failed to explain, however, how a constitution could be brought
about on the principles of popular sovereignty before a constitutional
convention would meet. The anonymous author who answered him
for that very reason called his argument “too idiotic to reply to”, but
nonetheless proceeded to do so at great length.44
By the time the first elected National Assembly met on March 1,
1796, it is clear from the above, a large number of constitutional issues
had already been exhaustively discussed: the matter of constitutional
renewal versus a completely new founding, the question of federalism
versus unitarism, and finally the issue of the powers of a constitutional
convention. Yet what was to become the most profound disagreement
among the Batavian revolutionaries was still to surface with full force:
the framers of the new Batavian constitution had to pronounce them-
selves on the ultimate goal of the constitution, on the very nature of
republican government. It was on this fundamentally important topic
that a veritable and unbridgeable abyss opened between the revolu-
tionaries, as is particularly clear from the debates concerning the first
constitutional proposal of 1797. It is with an analysis of the differences
of opinion about the nature of republican government that surfaced in
those debates then, that this discussion of the theoretical difficulties the
Dutch experienced in their attempts to give themselves a new constitu-
tion ends.
What emerged in these debates, it will be argued here, was noth-
ing less than a profound gap between liberal republicanism on the one
hand and radical republicanism on the other. Indeed, should one wish
43 [Cras] Gewigtig Advys, 6–7. On Cras see Kop, “Hendrik Constantijn Cras” and
45 The opposition between liberalism and republicanism during the late eighteenth-
century has generated a vast scholarly literature. Among the most important works are
Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment and Virtue, Commerce, and History; Kramnick, Republi-
canism and Bourgeois Liberalism; Appleby, Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imag-
ination; Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern; Fontana, The Invention of the Modern Republic;
Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism.
46 Schimmelpenninck, Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck, I, 51. For Schimmelpenninck’s
the people. As Jacob van Manen put it: “In a Representative Democ-
racy the Legislative Power fulfils the role the People has in a Direct
Democracy”.48 The liberal republicans furthermore advocated an elec-
toral system that would, by means of property qualifications and indi-
rect elections, ascertain the political dominance of a propertied elite in
the representative assembly: “perhaps not the truly rich, but certainly
the orderly and solid Citizens”.49 Finally, they constantly emphasized
the danger of the emergence of a tyranny by majority in democratic
systems. They therefore regarded it as of the utmost importance that
the powers of government were effectively restrained by a rock-solid
guarantee of individual rights and by the strictest possible application
of the principle of the separation of powers.50
To the radical republicans, who found an important spokesman in
Pieter Vreede, the liberal republican worship of the private sphere and
individual liberty and happiness constituted the abandonment of the
essential principles of a republic.51 A true republic, they were con-
vinced, was a form of government primarily based on public virtue
and collective liberty. As direct descendants of the radical Patriots of
the 1780s, the radical Batavians combined natural rights theories, clas-
sical republicanism and enlightened optimism about the capacities and
virtues of the people in their political discourse.52 These various ele-
ments all came together in their central political demand. They insisted
that the new constitution should do full justice to the permanent and
inalienable sovereignty of the people. By this they meant that it should
not only be theoretically based on that principle, but that it should
make the active political participation of the citizens the very core of
the new republican order. The radicals greeted the moderate republi-
can attempts to limit the direct exercise of the popular will with incom-
prehension and alarm. Nothing was more dangerous to liberty, they
48 De Gou, Het Ontwerp van Constitutie van 1797, I, 396. Indispensable for an under-
standing of the history of the concept of representation are Pitkin, The Concept of Repre-
sentation and Manin, The Principles of Representative Government.
49 De Gou, Het Ontwerp van Constitutie van 1797, I, 600. On the electoral system during
these first years of the Batavian Republic see Overdijk, “Regeling en praktijk van het
algemeen kiesrecht”.
50 E.g. Joannes van Hooff in De Gou, Het Ontwerp van Constitutie van 1797, I, 125 and
II, 365–366.
51 On Vreede see M.W. van Boven a.o., “Pieter Vreede” in: Vreede, Mijn Levensloop;
H.M. Beliën, “Pieter Vreede. Strijder voor de gelijkberechtiging van Brabant” in:
Beliën a.o., Nederlanders van het eerste uur and Chapter Seven.
52 For these characteristics of Patriot political discourse see Chapter Six.
196 chapter nine
53 De Gou, Het Ontwerp van Constitutie van 1797, I, 40. In 1795, Bosch had already
57 Ibidem, 190.
58 E.g. ibidem, 601.
59 De Gou, De Staatsregeling van 1798, I, 493.
60 Ibidem, 495–496.
198 chapter nine
Convinced as they were that their country was in a state of near mor-
tal crisis, the late eighteenth-century Dutch belonged to the first Euro-
peans to formulate plans for the fundamental reform of their state.
One of their central demands, already tentatively formulated during
the Patriot era, was a written constitution, which was regarded as the
only possible basis for a renewed national political life. It would take
the reformers fifteen years to realize their ambitious plans. This consid-
erable length of time may, of course, partly be explained by the fact that
the Patriot movement was temporarily crushed in 1787 by an Orangist
counter-revolution. Even after 1795, however, when the intervention of
the French revolutionary armies had dealt with the Orangist danger,
the Batavian revolutionaries experienced great difficulties in framing
the written constitution they all so ardently desired. Perhaps one should
not be too surprised at this. The changes the Batavian revolutionaries
desired to bring about were, after all, of a drastic and sweeping nature.
“There is perhaps not a single other state for which the great revolution
has been as radical”, the great historian Robert Fruin already observed
on the Batavian Republic in a famous essay written in 1865. With a use
of imagery strongly reminiscent of that of the constitutional debates of
the late eighteenth century, he continued: “In our country … all that
existed has been destroyed and has been replaced by an entirely new
building”.61
That is indeed the way things happened. The constitutional pro-
posal of 1797 had all the characteristics of a half-baked compromise. It
took an unfortunate middle position between federalism and unitarism
and it showed itself insufficiently responsive to the strong demand for a
substantial popular influence on politics. Indeed, its unworkable nature
was already sufficiently clear from the fact that it contained no fewer
than 918 articles and was therefore derisively nicknamed “the fat vol-
ume”. On August 8, 1797, an overwhelming majority of the electorate
rejected it.62 Since the second National Assembly was equally ideologi-
cally divided and politically inefficient, the process of constitution writ-
ing was now threatening to become an endless affair. At the same time,
the French increased pressure on their Batavian allies to come up with
a constitution. It was in this climate that the radicals, aided by the
the Dutch by their French allies, made the respect for written constitu-
tions sink to a new low. Despite all this, however, the late eighteenth-
century revolutionaries had succeeded in making a written constitution
into the essential prerequisite of any subsequent Dutch political order.
Even Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp, the conservative architect of a
nineteenth-century Dutch monarchical order that would have horrified
the Batavian radicals, could not afford to ignore this heritage of the
Batavian Republic.67
67 The best discussion of Van Hogendorp’s political thought remains Van der Hoe-
“A kingdom! Yes my friend, that is what our country has now come to”,
Anton Reinhard Falck wrote in June 1806, in a letter full of anger and
frustration, to Johan Hora Siccama in Groningen.1 Falck was just one of
many contemporaries who initially regarded the end of republican gov-
ernment and the installment of Louis Napoleon as king of the Nether-
lands with disgust and disbelief. Such an attitude is easy to understand.
For more than two centuries, Dutchmen had sung the praises of their
republican form of government and had been convinced of its superi-
ority to monarchical government. During the entire eighteenth century,
to go back no further, first Staatsgezinden and Orangists and later revolu-
tionaries and conservatives had, despite all their fundamental political
differences, all agreed on one thing: the country should always remain
a republic. Given this remarkable, longstanding and unanimous pref-
erence of the Dutch for a republican form of government, one would
expect historians to have exhaustively studied and analyzed the sudden
transition to monarchical government in 1806. Nothing is further from
the truth, however, for this crucially important episode in the genesis of
the modern Dutch state has received very little scholarly attention.
The reason for this neglect is partly to be sought in the way histo-
rians nowadays view the years around 1800. After a period of intense
political activism, which started with the Patriot movement of the 1780s
and which ended with the adoption of the first Dutch constitution of
1798, they discern a clear turning point. Revolutionary political pas-
sion, exhausted by years of petty political struggles, slowly ebbed away
and was replaced by a desire for unity and harmony, a development
that was further reinforced by the return of the old elites to political
life in 1801. The ever-increasing French intervention in Dutch politics,
moreover, spelled the end of the radical republicanism of the previous
two decades. Revolutionary political theory was replaced by a new sen-
timental feeling for the unique value of the fatherland, which expressed
2 This interpretation, which is now widely accepted among Dutch historians, was
originally advanced by N.C.F. van Sas in numerous publications, now collected in Van
Sas, De metamorfose van Nederland.
3 For some recent attempts to characterize Napoleonic rule see Baehr and Richter,
4 Colenbrander, Gedenkstukken der Algemeene Geschiedenis van Nederland, IV, II, 500–501.
5 Ibidem, 539.
6 Schimmelpenninck, Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck, I, 183–184.
7 Colenbrander, Gedenkstukken der Algemeene Geschiedenis van Nederland, IV, II, 429.
204 chapter ten
Nederland, 293–302.
10 Colenbrander, Gedenkstukken der Algemeene Geschiedenis van Nederland, IV, II, 581.
11 On Gogel see Sillem, De politieke en staatkundige werkzaamheid van Isaac Jan Alexander
Gogel and Verberne, Gogel en de uniteit. On The Democrats see De Lange, “De politieke
actie van een bewuste publieke opinie”.
12 Colenbrander, Gedenkstukken der Algemeene Geschiedenis van Nederland, IV, II, 526.
13 Ibidem, 525.
the end of republican politics 205
14 Ibidem, 530–535.
206 chapter ten
more ample” than anything ever possessed by either the Counts of Hol-
land or the stadholders in the past, indeed even greater than “that of
a constitutional King”. It was as if the ancient republican lesson that
“a Sovereign and Unlimited power” should never be given to “a single
person, whoever he is, and under whatever name” had suddenly been
completely forgotten.15
Schimmelpenninck ignored all these protests and thought them com-
pletely ridiculous.16 The form of government did not matter all that
much, he argued, the time of “theoretical reflections” was over; the
thing that counted now was that “the government should have enough
power to implement those measures it holds to be salutary” and to
“crush all foolish or malevolent opposition”.17 Yet even for this most
pragmatic of politicians, it transpired within a year after his appoint-
ment as Grand Pensionary, there were political and conceptual limits
that could not be crossed. When it became clear that Napoleon had
plans to entrust the government of the country to a hereditary monarch
picked from his own family, Schimmelpenninck attempted to prevent
this with the entire arsenal of old republican arguments. Just as Gogel
had done two years earlier, Schimmelpenninck now appealed to the
old Dutch national character. Indeed, the only hope for the future of
the country was vested in the preservation of this courageous and inde-
pendent national character, which “is the only basis for our existence
as Republicans”. Dutch national character, always characterized by a
“loathing of hereditary power”, would be irreparably damaged by “the
establishment of a court” and the attendant culture of splendor, luxury,
and militarism. The coming of a French monarch would, in short, be
entirely contrary to “the spirit … of the people” and would be a dis-
aster for the country. Even the man who was accused of monarchical
ambitions by many of his contemporaries could not, it is clear, easily
or entirely shed the heavy weight of the old republican arguments and
concepts.18
15 The letter is printed in Van der Aa, Geschiedenis van het Leven, Character, en Lotgevallen
19 Colenbrander, Gedenkstukken der Algemeene Geschiedenis van Nederland, IV, II, 626.
20 [Kemper] Brieven over de tegenwoordig in omloop zijnde geruchten, 17–18.
21 Hulshoff, Oproeping, van het Bataafsche volk, voorberigt. On Maria Hulshoff see
is lost in both cases, but irretrievably in the latter case; we would then
lose our existence as a nation, everything that is still left of our old
character would entirely disappear …24
It was in this chilly political climate that the new king Louis Napoleon
arrived in the Netherlands.25 His new subjects regarded him as the less
harmful of two disgusting alternatives. Those who expected the king to
be intimidated by this hostility and therefore to look for cautious com-
promises with the old republican convictions were immediately proven
wrong. The physically handicapped and melancholic Louis turned out
to be a man with surprisingly firm and developed views on the place of
his monarchy in Dutch history and a keen sense of the weaknesses of
the Dutch republican tradition. Far from trying to reach some form of
accommodation with the old republicanism, he set out to convince the
Dutch that their political views were outdated and in need of serious
revision. Since Louis Napoleon belonged to the select company of kings
who put their views in writing, it is possible for us to follow him closely
in his political and conceptual battle for the monarchy and against the
Dutch republican tradition.26
Even before he arrived in the country, Louis Napoleon realized that
a most difficult task awaited him. The constitution he had to work with
for the time being had simply placed the monarchy on top of the exist-
ing republican institutions. For the monarchy, this unfortunate situation
had created “des obstacles nombreux pour son établissement et sa con-
solidation dans l’esprit de la nation”.27 Louis was, moreover, well aware
of the fact that sudden and radical reform was regarded with deep
suspicion in the political cultures of the old republics of Europe.28 His
fears were confirmed by the way in which the political elites of the
Dutch “nation républicaine” welcomed him to his new country. They
24 Ibidem, 623–624.
25 On Louis Napoleon’s reign see Colenbrander, Schimmelpenninck en Koning Lodewijk;
Schama, Patriots and Liberators, 466–610; Kikkert, Koning van Holland; Joor, De Adelaar en
het Lam; Hallebeek and Sirks, Nederland in Franse schaduw; Rem and Sanders, Lodewijk
Napoleon.
26 Louis Bonaparte, Documens historiques et réflexions. In 1910, Colenbrander described
this work as extremely one-sided, badly composed, and unsuitable as a source for
our knowledge of the period (Colenbrander, Gedenkstukken der Algemeene Geschiedenis van
Nederland, V, I, xxv). While there is much to be said for this view, the Documens historiques
et réflexions nonetheless remain indispensable for an analysis of Louis’s political views.
27 Louis Bonaparte, Documens historiques et réflexions, I, 142–143.
28 On the Dutch “horreur du changement”: ibidem, III, 54, 167–168. For a modern
It was high time that the Dutch learned this political lesson and came
to recognize that the severe political problems their federative republic
had always been confronted with would be a thing of the past once a
moderate monarchy was successfully introduced.
The old Dutch Republic, Louis insisted, had really never been a sta-
ble and truly independent state.33 His interpretation of the history of
the Republic largely revolved around the Dutch incapacity to establish
a regime based on “des lois uniformes, libérales et fortes” and around
the lack of homogeneity and unity in Dutch republican government.
With the constant increase in political centralization in the countries
surrounding the Dutch Republic during the early modern period, this
serious flaw in the organization of political life had become more and
more harmful to the country. The only persons in whose power it had
been to ameliorate this state of affairs had been the Orange stadhold-
34 Ibidem, 12–22. The interpretation of Dutch history summarized here recurs time
“less robust” by the actual speaker, Maarten van der Goes: ibidem, 638. The speech
held by Van der Goes is printed in Louis Bonaparte, Documens historiques et réflexions, II,
38–50.
212 chapter ten
ideal, he insisted, was now better realized than ever before.42 Others
preferred to view the new monarchy in the light of the country’s most
recent history, as the inevitable outcome of the process of administrative
renewal and reform that had started in 1795 and now culminated in
“l’introduction du gouvernement monarchique”.43 But whatever the
arguments were, very few Dutchmen any longer openly regretted the
passing away of their republican political world.
The historian is consequently left with somewhat of a mystery. How
to explain this fundamental and seemingly sudden transition in Dutch
political life during the first decade of the nineteenth century? There
are no easy answers. One could of course argue that the Dutch, who—
given the international political situation—had very few choices, in
1806 simply tried to make the best of a regime imposed from the out-
side. Such an interpretation, however, fails to explain their considerable
enthusiasm for the new monarchy and, even more important, the fact
that republicanism did not resurface in any significant way in the years
after the French were defeated.44 One could also maintain that Louis
Napoleon’s likeable personality, his considerable efforts to defend Dutch
interests against the demands of his brother, and above all his energet-
ically presented program of administrative centralization and political
reconciliation, succeeded in convincing the Dutch of the advantages of
a monarchical form of government. While such a view is, as we have
seen, not entirely implausible, it nonetheless remains true that it is gen-
erally not given to any single individual to put a sudden end to a tra-
dition of political argumentation that has flourished for more than a
century. There evidently has to be something more.
Perhaps important clues are provided by, on the one hand, the quite
rigid way in which the Dutch tried to hold on to their old republi-
can identity in the last years before 1806 and, on the other hand, the
almost casual manner in which they gave it up once Louis Napoleon
had arrived. Both phenomena seem to suggest that Dutch republican-
42 Canter de Munck, De Oorzaken van den Oorlog, 57. For an elaborate argument
about the necessity of an eminent head see his 1802 treatise Vrije Gevoelens over de beste
Staatsgronden, II, 95–126. On Canter de Munck see Van Sas, De metamorfose van Nederland,
355–357.
43 Van Gennep in 1808, cited in Louis Bonaparte, Documens historiques et réflexions, II,
400.
44 On Dutch politics and political discourse in the decades after 1813 see Tamse and
Witte, Staats- en Natievorming in Willem I’s Koninkrijk; Van Sas, De metamorfose van Nederland,
399–480; Van Zanten, Schielijk, Winzucht, Zwaarhoofd en Bedaard.
the end of republican politics 213
Fruin en de partijen tijdens de Republiek and Tollebeek, De toga van Fruin, 13–68.
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INDEX
56. Pranger, M.B. Bernard of Clairvaux and the Shape of Monastic Thought. Broken Dreams.
1994. ISBN 90 04 10055 5
57. Van Deusen, N. Theology and Music at the Early University. The Case of Robert Gros-
seteste and Anonymous IV. 1994. ISBN 90 04 10059 8
58. Warneke, S. Images of the Educational Traveller in Early Modern England. 1994.
ISBN 90 04 10126 8
59. Bietenholz, P.G. Historia and Fabula. Myths and Legends in Historical Thought from
Antiquity to the Modern Age. 1994. ISBN 90 04 10063 6
60. Laursen, J.C. (ed.). New Essays on the Political Thought of the Huguenots of the Refuge. 1995.
ISBN 90 04 09986 7
61. Drijvers, J.W. & A.A. MacDonald (eds.). Centres of Learning. Learning and Location in
Pre-Modern Europe and the Near East. 1995. ISBN 90 04 10193 4
62. Jaumann, H. Critica. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Literaturkritik zwischen
Quintilian und Thomasius. 1995. ISBN 90 04 10276 0
63. Heyd, M. “Be Sober and Reasonable.” The Critique of Enthusiasm in the Seven-teenth
and Early Eighteenth Centuries. 1995. ISBN 90 04 10118 7
64. Okenfuss, M. J. The Rise and Fall of Latin Humanism in Early-Modern Russia. Pagan Aut-
hors, Ukrainians, and the Resiliency of Muscovy. 1995. ISBN 90 04 10331 7
65. Dales, R.C. The Problem of the Rational Soul in the Thirteenth Century. 1995.
ISBN 90 04 10296 5
66. Van Ruler, J.A. The Crisis of Causality. Voetius and Descartes on God, Nature and
Change. 1995. ISBN 90 04 10371 6
67. Shehadi, F. Philosophies of Music in Medieval Islam. 1995. ISBN 90 04 10128 4
68. Gross-Diaz, T. The Psalms Commentary of Gilbert of Poitiers. From Lectio Divina to the Lec-
ture Room. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10211 6
69. Van Bunge, W. & W. Klever (eds.). Disguised and Overt Spinozism around 1700. 1996.
ISBN 90 04 10307 4
70. Floridi, L. Scepticism and the Foundation of Epistemology. A Study in the Meta-logical Falla-
cies. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10533 6
71. Fouke, D. The Enthusiastical Concerns of Dr. Henry More. Religious Meaning and the Psy-
chology of Delusion. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10600 6
72. Ramelow, T. Gott, Freiheit, Weltenwahl. Der Ursprung des Begriffes der besten aller mög-
lichen Welten in der Metaphysik der Willensfreiheit zwischen Antonio Perez S.J.
(1599-1649) und G.W. Leibniz (1646-1716). 1997. ISBN 90 04 10641 3
73. Stone, H.S. Vico’s Cultural History. The Production and Transmission of Ideas in Nap-
les, 1685-1750. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10650 2
74. Stroll, M. The Medieval Abbey of Farfa. Target of Papal and Imperial Ambitions. 1997.
ISBN 90 04 10704 5
75. Hyatte, R. The Prophet of Islam in Old French: The Romance of Muhammad (1258) and
The Book of Muhammad’s Ladder (1264). English Translations, With an Introduc-
tion. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10709 2
76. Jestice, P.G. Wayward Monks and the Religious Revolution of the Eleventh Century. 1997.
ISBN 90 04 10722 3
77. Van der Poel, M. Cornelius Agrippa, The Humanist Theologian and His Declamations. 1997.
ISBN 90 04 10756 8
78. Sylla, E. & M. McVaugh (eds.). Texts and Contexts in Ancient and Medieval Science. Studies
on the Occasion of John E. Murdoch’s Seventieth Birthday. 1997.
ISBN 90 04 10823 8
79. Binkley, P. (ed.). Pre-Modern Encyclopaedic Texts. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10830 0
80. Klaver, J.M.I. Geology and Religious Sentiment. The Effect of Geological Discoveries on
English Society and Literature between 1829 and 1859. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10882 3
81. Inglis, J. Spheres of Philosophical Inquiry and the Historiography of Medieval Philosophy. 1998.
ISBN 90 04 10843 2
82. McCalla, A. A Romantic Historiosophy. The Philosophy of History of Pierre-Simon Bal-
lanche. 1998. ISBN 90 04 10967 6
83. Veenstra, J.R. Magic and Divination at the Courts of Burgundy and France. Text and Context
of Laurens Pignon’s Contre les devineurs (1411). 1998. ISBN 90 04 10925 0
84. Westerman, P.C. The Disintegration of Natural Law Theory. Aquinas to Finnis. 1998.
ISBN 90 04 10999 4
85. Gouwens, K. Remembering the Renaissance. Humanist Narratives of the Sack of Rome.
1998. ISBN 90 04 10969 2
86. Schott, H. & J. Zinguer (Hrsg.). Paracelsus und seine internationale Rezeption in der frühen Neu-
zeit. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Paracelsismus. 1998. ISBN 90 04 10974 9
87. Åkerman, S. Rose Cross over the Baltic. The Spread of Rosicrucianism in Northern Euro-
pe. 1998. ISBN 90 04 11030 5
88. Dickson, D.R. The Tessera of Antilia. Utopian Brotherhoods & Secret Societies in the
Early Seventeenth Century. 1998. ISBN 90 04 11032 1
89. Nouhuys, T. VAN. The Two-Faced Janus. The Comets of 1577 and 1618 and the Decline
of the Aristotelian World View in the Netherlands. 1998. ISBN 90 04 11204 9
90. Muessig, C. (ed.). Medieval Monastic Preaching. 1998. ISBN 90 04 10883 1
91. Force, J.E. & D.S. Katz (eds.). “Everything Connects”: In Conference with Richard H. Popkin.
Essays in His Honor. 1999. ISBN 90 04 110984
92. Dekker, K. The Origins of Old Germanic Studies in the Low Countries. 1999.
ISBN 90 04 11031 3
93. Rouhi, L. Mediation and Love. A Study of the Medieval Go-Between in Key Romance
and Near-Eastern Texts. 1999. ISBN 90 04 11268 5
94. Akkerman, F., A. Vanderjagt & A. Van der Laan (eds.). Northern Humanism between 1469
and 1625. 1999. ISBN 90 04 11314 2
95. Truman, R.W. Spanish Treatises on Government, Society and Religion in the Time of Philip II.
The ‘de regimine principum’ and Associated Traditions. 1999. ISBN 90 04 11379 7
96. Nauta, L. & A. Vanderjagt (eds.) Demonstration and Imagination. Essays in the History of
Science and Philosophy Presented to John D. North. 1999. ISBN 90 04 11468 8
97. Bryson, D. Queen Jeanne and the Promised Land. Dynasty, Homeland, Religion and Violen-
ce in Sixteenth-Century France. 1999. ISBN 90 04 11378 9
98. Goudriaan, A. Philosophische Gotteserkenntnis bei Suárez und Descartes im Zusammenhang mit der
niederländischen reformierten Theologie und Philosophie des 17. Jahrhunderts. 1999.
ISBN 90 04 11627 3
99. Heitsch, D.B. Practising Reform in Montaigne’s Essais. 2000. ISBN 90 04 11630 3
100. Kardaun, M. & J. Spruyt (eds.). The Winged Chariot. Collected Essays on Plato and Pla-
tonism in Honour of L.M. de Rijk. 2000. ISBN 90 04 11480 7
101. Whitman, J. (ed.), Interpretation and Allegory: Antiquity to the Modern Period. 2000.
ISBN 90 04 11039 9
102. Jacquette, D., David Hume’s Critique of Infinity. 2000. ISBN 90 04 11649 4
103. Bunge, W. VAN. From Stevin to Spinoza. An Essay on Philosophy in the Seventeenth-
Century Dutch Republic. 2001. ISBN 90 04 12217 6
104. Gianotti, T., Al-Ghaz§lÊ’s Unspeakable Doctrine of the Soul. Unveiling the Esoteric Psycho-
logy and Eschatology of the IÈy§. 2001. ISBN 90 04 12083 1
105. Saygin, S., Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (1390-1447) and the Italian Humanists. 2002.
ISBN 90 04 12015 7
106. BEJCZY, I., Erasmus and the Middle Ages. The Historical Consciousness of a Christian
Humanist. 2001. ISBN 90 04 12218 4
107. Brann, N.L. The Debate over the Origin of Genius during the Italian Renaissance. The Theories
of Supernatural Frenzy and Natural Melancholy in Accord and in Conflict on the
Threshold of the Scientific Revolution. 2002. ISBN 90 04 12362 8
108. Allen, M.J.B. & V. Rees with M. Davies. (eds.), Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philoso-
phy, His Legacy. 2002. ISBN 90 04 11855 1
109. Sandy, G., The Classical Heritage in France. 2002. ISBN 90 04 11916 7
110. Schuchard, M.K., Restoring the Temple of Vision. Cabalistic Freemasonry and Stuart Cul-
ture. 2002. ISBN 90 04 12489 6
111. Eijnatten, J. van. Liberty and Concord in the United Provinces. Religious Toleration and the
Public in the Eighteenth-Century Netherlands. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12843 3
112. Bos, A.P. The Soul and Its Instrumental Body. A Reinterpretation of Aristotle’s Philosophy
of Living Nature. 2003. ISBN 90 04 13016 0
113. Laursen, J.C. & J. van der Zande (eds.). Early French and German Defenses of Liberty of the
Press. Elie Luzac’s Essay on Freedom of Expression (1749) and Carl Friedrich Bahrdt’s On
Liberty of the Press and its Limits (1787) in English Translation. 2003. ISBN 90 04 13017 9
114. Pott, S., M. Mulsow & L. Danneberg (eds.). The Berlin Refuge 1680-1780. Learning and
Science in European Context. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12561 2
115. Gersh, S. & B. Roest (eds.). Medieval and Renaissance Humanism. Rhetoric, Repre-senta-
tion and Reform. 2003. ISBN 90 04 13274 0
116. Lennon, T.M. (ed.). Cartesian Views. Papers presented to Richard A. Watson. 2003.
ISBN 90 04 13299 6
117. Von Martels, Z. & A. Vanderjagt (eds.). Pius II – ‘El Più Expeditivo Pontefice’. Selected
Studies on Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (1405-1464). 2003. ISBN 90 04 13190 6
118. Gosman, M., A. Macdonald & A. Vanderjagt (eds.). Princes and Princely Culture
1450–1650. Volume One. 2003. ISBN 90 04 13572 3
119. Lehrich, C.I. The Language of Demons and Angels. Cornelius Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy.
2003. ISBN 90 04 13574 X
120. Bunge, W. van (ed.). The Early Enlightenment in the Dutch Republic, 1650–1750. Selected
Papers of a Conference held at the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel 22–23
March 2001. 2003. ISBN 90 04 13587 1
121. Romburgh, S. van, “For My Worthy Freind Mr Franciscus Junius.” An Edition of the Cor-
respondence of Francis Junius F.F. (1591-1677). 2004. ISBN 90 04 12880 8
122. Mulsow, M. & R.H. Popkin (eds.). Secret Conversions to Judaism in Early Modern Europe.
2004. ISBN 90 04 12883 2
123. Goudriaan, K., J. van Moolenbroek & A. Tervoort (eds.). Educa-tion and Learning in the
Netherlands, 1400-1600. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13644 4
124. Petrina, A. Cultural Politics in Fifteenth-Century England: The Case of Humphrey, Duke of Glou-
cester. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13713 0
125. Schuurman, P. Ideas, Mental Faculties and Method. The Logic of Ideas of Descartes and
Locke and Its Reception in the Dutch Republic, 1630–1750. 2004.
ISBN 90 04 13716 5
126. Bocken, I. Conflict and Reconciliation: Perspectives on Nicholas of Cusa. 2004.
ISBN 90 04 13826 9
127. Otten, W. From Paradise to Paradigm. A Study of Twelfth-Century Humanism. 2004.
ISBN 90 04 14061 1
128. Visser, A.S.Q. Joannes Sambucus and the Learned Image. The Use of the Emblem in Late-
Renaissance Humanism. 2005. ISBN 90 04 13866 8
129. Mooij, J.J.A. Time and Mind. History of a Philosophical Problem. 2005.
ISBN 90 04 14152 9
130. Bejczy, I.P. & R.G. Newhauser (eds.). Virtue and Ethics in the Twelfth Century. 2005.
ISBN 90 04 14327 0
131. Fisher, S. Pierre Gassendi’s Philosophy and Science. Atomism for Empiricists. 2005.
ISBN 90 04 11996 5
132. Wilson, S.A. Virtue Reformed. Rereading Jonathan Edwards’s Ethics. 2005.
ISBN 90 04 14300 9
133. Kircher, T. The Poet’s Wisdom. The Humanists, the Church, and the Formation of Phi-
losophy in the Early Renaissance. 2005. ISBN 90 04 14637 7
134. Mulsow, M. & J. Rohls (eds.). Socinianism and Arminianism. Antitrinitarians, Calvinists
and Cultural Exchange in Seventeenth-Century Europe. 2005.
ISBN 90 04 14715 2
135. Rietbergen, P. Power and Religion in Baroque Rome. Barberini Cultural Policies. 2006.
ISBN 90 04 14893 0
136. Celenza, C. & K. Gouwens (eds.). Humanism and Creativity in the Renaissance. Essays in
Honor of Ronald G. Witt. 2006. ISBN 90 04 14907 4
137. Akkerman, F. & P. Steenbakkers (eds.). Spinoza to the Letter. Studies in Words, Texts and
Books. 2005. ISBN 90 04 14946 5
138. Finkelstein, A. The Grammar of Profit: The Price Revolution in Intellectual Context. 2006.
ISBN 90 04 14958 9
139. Ittersum, M.J. van. Profit and Principle. Hugo Grotius, Natural Rights Theories and the
Rise of Dutch Power in the East Indies, 1595-1615. 2006. ISBN 90 04 14979 1
140. Klaver, J.M.I. The Apostle of the Flesh: A Critical Life of Charles Kingsley. 2006.
ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15128 4, ISBN-10: 90 04 15128 1
141. Hirvonen, V., T.J. Holopainen & M. Tuominen (eds.). Mind and Modality. Studies in the
History of Philosophy in Honour of Simo Knuuttila. 2006.
ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15144 4, ISBN-10: 90 04 15144 3
142. Davenport, A.A. Descartes’s Theory of Action. 2006. ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15205 2,
ISBN-10: 90 04 15205 9
143. Mazzocco, A. Interpretations of Renaissance Humanism. 2006.
ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15244 1, ISBN-10: 90 04 15244 X
144. Verbaal, W., Y. Maes & J. Papy (eds.). Latinitas Perennis, Volume I: The Continuity of Latin
Literature. 2007. ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15327 1, ISBN-10: 90 04 15327 6
145. Boulton, D’Arcy J.D. & J.R. Veenstra (eds.). The Ideology of Burgundy. The Promotion of
National Consciousness, 1364-1565. 2006. ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15359 2,
ISBN-10: 90 04 15359 4
146. Ruler, H. van, A. Uhlmann & M. Wilson (eds.). Arnold Geulincx Ethics. With Samuel
Beckett’s Notes. Translated by M. Wilson. 2006. ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15467 4,
ISBN-10: 90 04 15467 1 (Published as Vol. 1 in the subseries Brill’s Texts and Sources in
Intellectual History)
147. Radding, C.M. & A. Ciaralli (eds.). The Corpus Iuris Civilis in the Middle Ages. Manu-
scripts and Transmission from the Sixth Century to the Juristic Revival. 2007.
ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15499 5, ISBN-10: 90 04 15499 X
148. Birkedal Bruun, M. Parables: Bernard of Clairvaux’s Mapping of Spiritual Topography. 2007.
ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15503 9, ISBN-10: 90 04 15503 1
149. Lehner, U. Kants Vorsehungskonzept auf dem Hintergrund der deutschen Schulphilosophie und -
theologie. 2007. ISBN 978 90 04 15607 4
150. Warnar, G. Ruusbroec. Literature and Mysticism in the Fourteenth Century. Translated
by D. Webb. 2007. ISBN 978 90 04 15869 6
151. Treschow, M., Otten, W. & W. Hannam (eds.). Divine Creation in Ancient, Medieval, and
Early Modern Thought. Essays Presented to the Rev’d Dr Robert D. Crouse. 2007.
ISBN 978 90 04 15619 7
152. Juste, D. Les Alchandreana primitifs. Étude sur les plus anciens traités astro-
logiques latins d’origine arabe (Xe siècle). 2007. ISBN 978 90 04 15827 6 (Published
as Vol. 2 in the subseries Brill’s Texts and Sources in Intellectual History)
153. Chardonnens, L.S. Anglo-Saxon Prognostics, 900-1100. Study and Texts. 2007. ISBN 978
90 04 15829 0 (Published as Vol. 3 in the subseries Brill’s Texts and Sources in Intellectual
History)
154. Melve, L. Inventing the Public Sphere. The Public Debate during the Investiture Contest
(c. 1030–1122). 2007. ISBN 978 90 04 15884 9
155. Velema, W.R.E. Republicans. Essays on Eighteenth-Century Dutch Political Thought.
2007. ISBN 978 90 04 16191 7
156. Boone, R.A. War, Domination, and the Monarchy of France, Claude de Seyssel and the Lan-
guage of Politics in the Renaissance. 2007. ISBN 978 90 04 16214 3
157. Smith, P.J. Dispositio: Problematic Ordering in French Renaissance Literature. 2007.
ISBN 978 90 04 16305 8
158 . Heddle, D.C. John Stewart of Baldynneis’ Roland Furious, A Scots Poem in its European
Context. 2007. ISBN 978 90 04 16318 8
159. Margret Schuchard (ed.). Bernhard Varenius (1622-1650). 2007.
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